Crossroads
by The Cheshire Cheese
Summary: "This could be a turning point in our battle against the Borg." The Unimatrix Zero incident is a turning point for many of the Voyager crew. Nine chapters, each featuring a different regular's missing scenes and thoughts during "Unimatrix Zero."
1. Memoirs of Unimatrix Zero

**A/N: This was meant to be a one-shot drabble piece that got out of hand. There will be one chapter for each of the nine regulars. If anyone has suggestions for things to include for future chapters, I will consider them (but no promises).**

 **Several characters and ideas in this chapter are borrowed from Scifiromance, with her permission. More on that in the closing note.**

 **The first two chapters have also received edits.**

 **I do not own "Star Trek."**

* * *

She was now switching between Seven of Nine and Annika with unsettling ease. In her last visit to Unimatrix Zero, she'd feared she wouldn't remember how to operate Astrometrics when she returned to Voyager; but as soon as her eyes opened and she saw her cargo bay, Annika was gone, and Seven had no doubts about any of her normal capabilities. The sensation was identical to that of waking from a regular dream—of which she'd had plenty, despite what she'd hastily told the Doctor a few days earlier. Or more accurately, _hadn't_ told. Seven technically hadn't lied to the hologram; she simply hadn't corrected his blunder.

"Another milestone!" the hologram had declared cheerily. "You've had your first dream."

As soon as he'd said it, Seven had been taken back to her _real_ first dream on Voyager, which she recalled with perfect clarity. As images of the cawing raven literally flew through her mind, she quickly changed the subject. "I felt awake."

The Doctor would have known about the Raven incident, but apparently a holographic database was just as capable of overlooking information as the human brain. The one other instance of Seven dreaming that the Doctor definitely _would_ know about, the hologram had either also forgotten, or simply attributed to the alien involvement in that incident. Seven played along for the rest of the conversation, not wishing to delve into the subject. But the Doctor's determination to dissect Seven's "dream" became increasingly frustrating.

"...The mysterious stranger, for example. Is he a father figure, or does he represent a repressed desire for male companionship?"

She didn't answer right away.

Seven had been dreaming about both subjects for some time now. Her parents and childhood assimilation had entered her dreams as early as her first regeneration period aboard Voyager. Dreams of "male companionship" weren't new to her either, though she hadn't done much more in her sleep than in reality. After the infamous "take off your clothes" incident with Harry Kim, she'd dreamed about them copulating, and woken up feeling more puzzled than anything else. While preparing for her date with Lt. William Chapman, she'd dreamed about a successful date ending in a kiss, and later had a rather uncomfortable dream that involved kissing the _Doctor_ of all people. But that had been well over a year ago.

Seven had thought she was done with those kinds of dreams until two weeks ago, when Commander Chakotay had elected to invade her subconscious (and increasingly, her consciousness as well). She'd dreamed once about them romantically involved as the night singer and American soldier in the WWII holo-program. She'd had several dreams about being stranded with him during one of the many away missions unfortunate enough to involve the Commander at the helm of a shuttle, and somehow ending up in intimate positions with him in the remains of said shuttle. Since dreams could provide no more detail than they could gather from real experiences, she had no way of knowing if Chakotay was any better at sex than at piloting, and she had no intention of ever finding out.

This new man she'd seen in the forest the previous night was an unwelcome change from Chakotay. Seven knew the man's face, the clearly Cardassian features watered down by some other ancestry. His identity and significance were on the edge of her mind, and it was maddening not to be able to reach that information. The Doctor's suggestion that the man was a lover was the last thing she wanted to consider, now of all times.

"I don't wish to dream again," she'd finally said with perfect honesty.

Now, days later, Seven was gazing over a PADD, reviewing her notes for the meeting she had in two hours' time, where she was to brief Captain Janeway, Commander Tuvok, and Lt. Torres on how to behave like drones and what to expect during the assimilation process.

Reliving her own assimilation was nothing new to Seven. She had been doing it ever since Chakotay severed her from the Collective. But now another part of that process was coming back to her; her arrival at Unimatrix Zero.

She didn't remember most of her assimilation in linear detail. She remembered crying as her parents were dragged off by drones, while she hid in a cupboard. She remembered the door opening, and a white-faced drone with strangely textured skin (a former Hirogen, she now knew) staring her down with one back eye and one rectangular green light, reaching out and piercing her neck with two tubules. Everything after that was hazy and discombobulated, like trying to remember an eighteen-year-long dream. And now she was doing it all over again, with eighteen years of changing relationships and adventures in Unimatrix Zero.

* * *

Annika never knew how many times she'd come to Unimatrix Zero as a six-year-old before she became fully aware of what had happened. For the first few visits, she'd regarded it much as a child would a regular dream, blissfully forgetful of what had happened to her back in reality. But at some point, Annika remembered that her birthday had been interrupted by Borg drones who'd taken her parents away, and stung her in the neck with sharp tubes. She had strange memories of a dark, metallic place with green lighting, and a feeling of vastness and power that she couldn't begin to understand. She didn't know how she'd ended up in this forest, but she wanted to find her parents. Or at least her stuffed mouse Fritz, or her yellow blanket. And she didn't want help from any of the scary people who roamed these woods. When they tried to talk to her, she ran and hid from them.

Annika was crouching in the bushes, hiding from a lumpy-faced monster wearing a strange wire-thing around its face, when she happened to look up and see a lady flying overhead, just like Peter Pan. From this distance the woman looked normal, except her hair was a pale, pearly purple. That immediately put Annika at ease, because one of the Little Mermaid's sisters (from the holo-series of fairy tale retellings she watched at home on the Raven) had hair just like that. The flying lady made eye contact with Annika, and then dived downward, as if swimming. The woman stopped just a little way above the ground, holding on to tree branches to steady herself as she hoovered before Annika. Up close the woman looked much stranger. Not only was her hair purple, but her forehead had a large lumpy shape that looked like a giant letter V, and she had no eyebrows. But her eyes reminded Annika of the hero Hwa Mulan (from one of the other fairy tale holos), and the woman had a reassuring smile.

"Are you a fairy?" Annika timidly asked the woman.

"I'm Elaysian," the woman replied softly. "My name is Sonza. What's yours?"

"Annika." She broke down into tears. "I want my mom."

Sonza came to a full landing and hugged Annika while she cried for who-knew how long. Finally, Sonza told her, "I'm looking for my family too. Why don't we look together?"

Sniffling Annika nodded.

While they walked through the forest, Sonza told Annika all about her home planet Gemworld, a world with a crystal surface, where the gravity was so low that people could swim through the air like in water.

"Do all Elsans have purple hair?" Annika asked.

"No. My brother Orath had hair the same color as yours."

Sonza tried to teach Annika how to fly, but Annika could never stay in the air too long; it was like trying to keep afloat in water, minus the fear of drowning. So after that Sonza showed Annika all the things one could do in the magic forest, with their imagination. They made flowers change color, just by concentrating, and even managed to make some fireflies appear in the bushes.

"Sonza?" a man's voice called.

"Over here," the Elaysian answered.

Two people emerged from the thicket. One was a normal looking man with dark skin and a black mustache. The other was the scary looking man Annika had been hiding from earlier. He had a lumpy, scaly face like a monster. His clothes were baggy and gray, decorated with colorful squares that reminded her of one of her toys back home, and he wore a rectangular wire contraption around his eyes.

"It's okay Annika." Sonza said. "These are my friends. This is Tov," she gestured to the normal looking man, "and Turanoth."

Timidly, Annika allowed herself to be drawn into a conversation with the two new adults.

Tov looked Human, but was really El-Aurian. His people lived hundreds of years, but had lost their homeworld to the Borg. Turanoth was a B'Omar, and the B'Omar were not monsters at all; just very evolved turtles. But the B'Omar's shells were more flexible than Earth turtles,' more like an armadillo's, and they liked to enhance their shells with technology. The wire-thing around his head was to help him hear and smell and sense electromagnetic fields, since these were senses other species already had that his own otherwise lacked.

The group was in the middle of talking when Sonza suddenly vanished, right out of the air.

Tov quickly assured Annika, "She'll be back."

"Where'd she go?" Annika asked with just a hint of an edge in her voice.

"She is asleep." Turanoth said. "When people sleep in this forest they become invisible. Like animals curling into shells."

Annika searched the grass around them, for any evidence of Sonza's invisible sleeping body.

"She's not down here anymore," Tov explained. "People here sleep in the sky, in clouds."

Annika craned her neck up, and wondered which cloud Sonza was wrapped in, and what it would look like when she woke up and came back. Annika didn't find the Elaysian, but she did see a black bird soar across the sky. It was pretty. It reminded her of a painting that hung in her parents' bedroom.

The adults told the "sleeping in the clouds" story to every child who arrived in the forest. Annika tried as hard as she could to stay awake while transporting to her cloud, but never succeeded. But she always awoke up standing up, in the middle of the forest, with memories of the same strange dream that she could never fully remember, mostly because she couldn't even fully understand what she'd experienced once she was back in the woods. All she could say at that age was that the dream involved lots of numbers and green light, and that she'd felt very big.

As she became more secure with her situation, Annika began to arrive in the forest with her favorite yellow blanket in hand, and Fritz even turned up in the bushes one day, his red velvet body unharmed by the elements of the forest. As time went on, she would often arrive with the stuffed, Nutcracker-dressed mouse in her arm when she began regenerating, until she gradually grew out of Fritz. On several occasions, she would see a black raven soaring through the air or perched in a tree. It had some kind of significance to her, but she'd never been able to get close enough to touch it.

She was seven or eight when she finally understood that the _forest_ was the dream. She now knew the Borg assimilated people all over the galaxy, and she along with everyone else was part of the Hive Mind, except when regenerating. No one knew how this forest had come into exitance. She heard people refer to the place by all kinds of names, including "the Forest," "the Green Place" or "Neuro-Space;" but the one she and her friends preferred was "Unimatrix Zero."

* * *

" _Where am I_?"

Annika, nine or ten years old, watched from where she bobbed in the water, as the newly arrived alien whirled around frantically. He'd appeared right in the opening of a riverside cave, behind a thin waterfall. He had no hair, and his skin was textured like a brown crocodile's. He wore a blue shinny armor, and was armed with an odd curved blade. Annika's Talaxian friend Vaxo, who was just a little bit older than her, treaded water next to her, both children unsure how to respond to the new arrival. Sonza, who'd taken the kids swimming, rose out of the water and hoovered over to the alien, her wet purple hair dripping over her large forehead.

"You're in Unimatrix Zero," Sonza explained to the alien. "A virtual reality. You've been assimilated."

The alien's black eyes moved downward as he thought it over. "We were on a hunt. We were searching for a prey no one had ever attempted before. Everyone told us to stay away from the Borg. I wanted to listen, secretly, but none of us wanted to be the one to say it." He glanced at the children, then back at Sonza. "Do all assimilated Borg come here?"

Sonza's small dark eyes flicked to the children, then back to the alien. "Not much is known about this place. We don't have many answers. I'm Sonza. This is Annika, and Vaxo. What's your name?"

"Nezmin," the alien said. "I'm Hirogen."

Sonza and Nezmin went to go talk quietly in the cave, about something they clearly didn't want the kids to overhear. Either Hirogen and Elaysian children were more obedient than Human and Talaxian ones, or Nezmin and Sonza just didn't know very much about kids. Naturally, Annika and Vaxo snuck into the cave to eavesdrop. They peaked around from behind a large wet rock, watching Sonza speak quietly to the Hirogen, who listened while staring down at his blade.

"A lot of people think it started as a mutation when some drone got assimilated, some species with some mental abilities that allowed them to create this world. Others think it's a fluke in the Borg's technology. It could also be the result of a pathogen someone tried to use against the Collective."

"And you don't know what determines who ends up in Unimatrix Zero?" Nezmin asked.

"Correct. We have theories, but nothing conclusive."

"How many drones have this mutation?"

"From what we've been able to gather, only about one in a million."

That was when Annika realized she would never see her parents again.

* * *

"What happens if someone arrives in the middle of the water?" Rebi asked.

Seven was tired of answering the children's' endless questions about Unimatrix Zero, and getting them to into their regeneration alcoves tonight seemed next to impossible. Rebi stared at Seven from where he sat on a crate, with an expression most would read as nonexistent; but as far as Seven was concerned, he might as well have been bouncing like Naomi Wildman. Naomi, thankfully, was in her quarters, though probably not asleep. Rebi's twin Azan looked up from the Talaxian novel Neelix had loaned him, also anticipating Seven's answer.

Seven replied flatly, "They either drown and their regeneration cycle ends, or they realize they are in a virtual reality and teach themselves to breathe underwater."

From where he sat on the edge of his alcove, Icheb pointed out, "That would not be the case if they were Brunali."

"Or Norcadian," Mezoti added smugly, circling around the cargo bay on her favorite scooter.

She and Icheb were referring to the gills that opened up on each side of their nose crests when underwater, largely invisible when dry. (The Brunali and Norcadians were in fact subspecies of the same amphibian race.) It had taken Seven quite some time to accept this when she took the children swimming on the holodeck, coming near panic whenever Icheb and Mezoti were underwater for too long.

"It's not fair," Azan lamented. "You two can breathe underwater and Seven can go to Unimatrix Zero."

"And you two can read each other's minds to cheat at Kadis-kot," Mezoti countered, before steering her scooter over to Seven. "Did it ever happen to you Seven, arriving at Unimatrix Zero in the middle of a river or lake?"

"No." Seven lied. "Your regeneration cycles cannot be postponed any further."

"Why can't we stay onboard for the battle?" Rebi asked, in a tone few would recognize as Borg wining.

Seven could only stare at the boy. In addition to a lifetime of trauma courtesy her parents' selfishness in bringing her along on their mission, she also now remembered countless other children she'd helped nurture in Unimatrix Zero who'd been aboard ships that didn't take precautions with their civilian populations.

Icheb and Mezoti were also staring at Rebi. Rebi wasn't looking at any of them, but his face and posture suddenly changed. Azan was staring at his book, but Seven detected a smugness beneath his Borg composure, and suspected he'd just told his twin off through their neural link.

"Seven," Mezoti said, "If the twins have linked minds already, then that's one less person Tuvok would have to mind-meld with to take us to Unimatrix Zero. He can meld you and Icheb, and Vorik can meld me to Azan or Rebi and one of the other Vulcans can meld two of us together."

"Unlikely. Commander Tuvok is the only Vulcan on board capable of the procedure."

"Then we can go one at a time," Icheb suggested.

Arguing with the children seemed pointless. "We will continue this discussion in the morning. Report to your alcoves." Thinking on the spot, Seven added, "Perhaps with the damage the Collective is suffering, a malfunction will occur and one of you will find your way to Unimatrix Zero tonight."

This worked on all but Icheb.

"You're only saying that to get us into our alcoves," the Brunali teenager accused.

"That doesn't discredit the statement," Seven replied.

"Is it true," Icheb asked quietly, "that the Borg Queen threatened Harry Kim?"

Almost out of patience, Seven snapped, "You can ask Ensign Kim yourself, in the morning. Like most aboard this ship he has already retired for the night."

The Brunali finally took the hint, and turned to head back to his alcove.

"The last time I saw the Queen," Seven confessed, causing Icheb to stop with one foot on his alcove, "My father was with her. Assimilated." She swallowed, as Icheb stared at her, at a loss for words. "Now she has threatened my new family." Family was one thing Icheb and Seven had in common; both had been raised by seemingly caring parents who, in the end, put their Borg-related agendas before the wellbeing of their children. Of all people on board, Icheb and Seven best understood what being a part of Voyager's "family" actually meant to each other. "She will fail," Seven assured him. "But in order to defeat her I need you in the shuttle, watching over the younger children."

Icheb nodded. For a moment, he seemed to flounder for a way to assure her he would do so, but eventually just settled for, "Goodnight Seven."

"Goodnight Icheb."

* * *

Annika was twelve or thirteen when species from the Alpha and Beta Quadrants began popping up regularly in Unimatrix Zero. For a while, she was one of the only ones who recognized these new races. She couldn't provide much information, having been less than six the last time she'd seen or heard of any of them. But she helped all she could. By now, Annika had grown into the role of advisor and mentor. She was one of the first to greet new children, and take on the task of warming them up to their new life.

Annika's own closest mentor, in teaching her how to be a mentor, was a man named Axum. She would never recall how and when she'd first met Axum; he'd just always been there—an acquaintance of Sonza and Annika's other guardians. Axum was three-fourths El Aurian, and thus centuries old despite his youthful appearance. His distinctive forehead came from a Cardassian grandfather, who'd died centuries before Axum was born (one of a group of refugees fleeing the then newly formed Cardassian Union). Axum was an invaluable mentor to Annika, having lived in Unimatrix Zero for almost an entire century.

Axum had been with Annika and Turanoth when she'd met her first Vulcan. The B'Omar had sensed a new heartbeat through his head-wire, and the trio soon found a petite, mahogany-skinned Vulcan sitting on her knees in the middle of the woods, as if meditating, but with tears falling freely from her face.

Annika whispered to Axum and Turanoth, "That's a Vulcan. They usually have to suppress their emotions..."

She wondered what the consequences for a Vulcan letting out her emotions in this place would be. Would this woman's assimilated body suffer, be declared "defective," and get dismantled?

The woman opened slanted green eyes, still wet with fresh tears. "Dr. T'Nara," she said, in a shaking voice. Somewhere in the distance, a raven cawed. "Now Two of Five, Secondary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero Four. Formerly physician aboard the Vulcan Command ship _Varath'nor_ , wife and mother of three."

Carefully, Annika said, "I thought it was dangerous for Vulcans to...let out their emotions."

T'Nara continued to weep. "It is. But as the worst now that could possibly happen is dismantlement, I see no point in suppressing my emotions in this dream-state, when there will be no consequences for me in this place. If I vanish never to return, it will be a pleasant fate compared to those suffered by my comrades."

Yet despite this first encounter, T'Nara would remain one of the most logical and cool-headed of Unimatrix Zero's members, acting like a typical Vulcan much of the time.

A far less peaceful arrival was General Korok. Annika had only ever seen Klingons in pictures and holo-shows as a child. But suddenly, while she was playing hide-and-seek with some of the younger kids, a large Klingon with large wild eyes appeared in the middle of the woods, swinging a bat'leth madly, demanding to know where he was.

While Annika blocked the younger children (who were nowhere near as frightened as they would have been in the waking world), Axum leapt out of the bushes and stopped before the frantic Klingon, his hands held out diplomatically.

"We're not enemies," Axum said sternly.

The Klingon growled. "Where am I? I was in the middle of a battle! Am I dead?"

"Not quite," Axum said. "All of us here have been assimilated."

The Klingon's eyes flared. "Klingons die in battle, or they prevail. We are never assimilated!"

"Apparently you are," Axum said simply.

"You lie," the Klingon whispered, then roared, "You're one of the _Kos'karii!_ "

Axum began, "I don—"

The Klingon's blade whooshed through the air, and Axum's body collapsed to the ground, his head tumbling off. Axum's noggin was still rolling when it vanished away, along with his decapitated body, as if through a transporter beam. The Klingon's manic glare turned to Annika, who stared at him with hard blue eyes. Behind her, the three kids she was guarding expressed a range of reactions from a scream to "Cool!"

"He'll be back," Annika told the Klingon. "All you've done is interrupt his regeneration cycle."

She herself had "died" more times than she could count, while exploring and testing the limits of the virtual forest. It was a wonder Seven of Nine—as she'd recently been dubbed by the Borg, having finally emerged from her maturation chamber—hadn't been declared defective and shut down.

The Klingon growled softly at her. "You are indeed powerful. Even here in Gre'thor, even knowing you're false, I can't kill children."

"We're not 'false.' We're regenerating, and so are you."

The Klingon let out a huffing roar. It took a moment for Annika to realize that this was his way of telling the children to get lost. Glancing back at the young Vidiian boy, and Brunali and Pendari girls, Annika made a "shoo" motion with her hands, and followed the children tearing through the forest.

Wolf 359 had been less than a year later.

Annika was now in her mid-teens. General Korok had long-since accepted his situation, and made peace with Axum. Sonza was still flying around Unimatrix Zero, mostly sticking with the younger children. Tov, the dark El Arian, had become increasingly reclusive, and Turanoth, the B'Omar, had recently vanished. (The B'Omar's cube had been battling Dominion forces in the Gamma Quadrant, and suffered heavy casualties.) Meanwhile, the Borg were carving a path of destruction through the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, having destroyed a wave of Federation and Romulan colonies, and now had wiped out a Federation fleet.

Neither General Korok nor his Hirogen friend Nezmin were all too pleased with the knowledge that they were committing such cowardly acts for the will of their oppressors in the waking world, and were taking their anger out as they often did, with a duel to the "death." Korok swung his bat'leth, while the lanky Hirogen dodged and slashed with his knife. A group of spectators watched, some regulars, others new faces. Annika had long-since grown bored, having seen both Korok and Nezmin die a dozen times, and was wandering around the circle of spectators daydreaming, when she happened upon a dark-haired woman crying against a tree. At first Annika took her for another El Aurian, but then she noticed the woman's black and yellow uniform, the same design that Captain Picard had worn before his transformation into Locutus. (That much, Annika remembered from her waking life as a member of the Collective.)

"Are you Human?" Annika asked, figuring this was as good a way as any to interrupt the woman's tears.

The woman wiped her eyes, nodding. "Ensign Laura Kovacs, U.S.S. Firebrand." Laura squinted hard, and took a deep breath. "I've looked all over this forest and," she swallowed, " _dug_ through my own mind. I can't find my friends or my captain or my boyfriend anywhere, but I know that Captain Jean Luc Picard liked Earl Gray tea and had feelings for Beverly." Exasperated, Laura banged her fist against the tree. "Who _is_ Beverly? I've never even _met_ Captain Picard!" She turned to face Annika, and her hazel eyes widened. "Oh my god, you're a kid!"

Laura couldn't have been that much older than Annika. The ensign seemed to be somewhere in her early to mid-twenties. She was the first other Human that Annika had met in this place. But she probably wouldn't be the last.

Laura had been in Unimatrix Zero for only a few days, but having learned upon arrival how rare the Unimatrix Zero mutation was, was already coming to grips with the fact that none of her comrades from the Firebrand were likely to turn up in this place. Axum and Annika both consoled the former Starfleet engineer to their best of abilities.

"At least your family's safe," Axum reminded Laura. "My first wife, and two of our five children, were assimilated, and none of them ever made it to Unimatrix Zero."

"Neither did my parents." Annika added.

"They're dead already," Korok, of all people, had joined the circle. Standing over the group sitting in the grass, he folded his arms and addressed Laura. "When our comrades make it to the afterlife they'll remember nothing in-between, as if no time has passed."

"And we're in Purgatory," Laura sniffled. "How do you live here? Knowing...everything?"

" _Because_ of what we know," Axum said. "Because I know how long my people, the El Aurians, have survived after the Borg destroyed our homeworld, and how they continue to thrive and prevail despite the obstacles. After the attacks on those colonies and at Wolf 359, I felt all those people's horror, and was sure I wanted to die. But then I realized that Captain Picard's ship has an El Aurian onboard, as a bartender. And somehow that... that turned it around for me."

Korok growled at Laura, "Your species may not be warriors like mine, but surely they've survived worse than a very dull, never-ending dream."

Annika sized up the woman before her. "You're an artist Laura, aren't you."

Laura stared at the girl with confused hazel eyes. Annika's eyes moved down to the blades of grass in Laura's had, that the woman hadn't realized she was braiding.

Annika shifted in the grass. "My room on my parents' ship was covered in drawings. You can do all kinds of things in Unimatrix Zero. Look," she plucked a green leaf and concentrated on it, until its pigment turned red with yellow stripes, like a beetle's.

Laura stared in mild fascination, then wiped her eyes. "I make holo-paintings for my shipmates sometimes. _Made_ holo-paintings."

Laura, Axum and Annika spent the next few hours making designs out of the plants, while Korok returned to fighting Nezmin. Then Annika tried teaching Laura how to fly.

"Is this sort of like lucid dreaming?" Laura asked, as she and Annika both struggled to stay afloat in the air.

"A bit," Annika said. "But it takes a lot of concentration and effort..."

Breaking concentration, Annika tumbled to the ground. Laura followed. While they brushed leaves and dirt off their clothes, Laura took off her gold uniform jacket, revealing a black a tank-top underneath.

"What's that?" Annika pointed to a tattoo on Laura's forearm.

Laura stared at the row of tiny, blue numbers running down her inner forearm: 6117153.

"Six of Eleven, Septenary Adjunct of Unimatrix 153," Laura recited quietly.

The trees rustled, but it was only a black bird taking flight from its perch.

Then Laura spent some time telling Annika about how the group of humans she belonged to, the Romani, had once been imprisoned in concentration camps, alongside Jews, the disabled, homosexuals, prisoners of war, and countless other "undesirables." Some of Laura's direct ancestors had lived in such camps. Annika had never imagined her own species, who so resembled the peaceful El Aurians, had a history as cutthroat as Klingons or Hirogen, and sometimes operated with intents dark enough to match the Borg.

Both Annika and Laura would soon realize how lucky they were to have such solid identities.

One of the other new members was a joined Trill named Xin. His first named changed, along with his gender, personality, and age, almost every time he entered Unimatrix Zero. Once, Annika was flirting with a handsome Trill adolescent close to her age, dark-skinned with pale spots and piercing gold eyes, only to realize this was an older version of Lysor Xin, whom she'd been babysitting a toddler version of only a few regeneration cycles ago. It was months before Xin, with the help of his friends, figured out that the host who'd been assimilated was a 38-year-old male scientist named Shardan. After that, the various hosts gradually became aware of each other.

Another new member was an Orion man named Wachow, who would confess to Annika and Laura years later that he was in fact a "she" in the waking world, but had never felt right in a female body. Being transgendered was difficult enough for a person of any species, but for an Orion it was particularly troublesome, due to the species' biology. Wachow felt guilt for enjoying Unimatrix Zero, knowing at what cost it came, and feared his Cardassian lover N'Lor wouldn't be able to stay with him should they ever escape the Collective, despite N'Lor's insistence that she absolutely would.

And then there was Evthukl. Evthukl was Kobali—a bad, purple-skinned race that reproduced by resurrecting the dead of other species and reconstructing their bodies and brains. The process normally involved massive memory loss, which made the transition easier. Evthukl's Kobali "birth" had gone smoothly, leaving him with virtually no memory of or interest in his former life...until he was assimilated and arrived in Unimatrix Zero. Half the time, Annika and her friends were met with Evthukl: a carefree, purple-skinned musician, who taught Annika Kobali dance moves and eagerly played matchmaker for her and Axum. The other half of the time, Three of Ten came to Unimatrix Zero as Geminon: a white-skinned, violet-eyed Vorta, frantic to escape this virtual prison so he could continue his "mission," and wondering what the "Founders" had meant by destining him to this place. No one knew who the "Founders" were, but they were apparently gods in Geminon's purple eyes.

On the other end of the scale was Siral, one of the first friends Seven of Nine would later recognize when Axum brought her back to Unimatrix Zero.

"I remember him," she'd said, as the humanoid appeared and began socializing with Laura.

When Annika had first met the balding humanoid, she'd been surprised to learn he too was from the Alpha Quadrant.

"I don't remember your species," she said, her eyes running up and down his strange nose, forehead and spots.

"We Sovrat don't get out much. Being a subject species of another race's empire doesn't allow for much traveling."

Korok cut in, "The Klingon Empire permits free mobility between its subject species, and has even allowed them seats on the High Council."

"Even so, your rule leaves a bit to be desired." Siral turned back to Annika. "Some of my people attempted to flee the Empire. And we ran into the Borg instead. It seems I'm not meant to be free."

"But you're free here," Annika said.

"There's no need to comfort me with mental gymnastics. We're prisoners here. But it's a nice prison and I'm resigned to enjoy myself in it. I'm used to living under someone else's rule after all."

"The Klingon Empire is nothing like the Borg!" Korok huffed. "We don't take other species' individuality away, or their honor! We give everyone we conquer a fair fight."

"Well this subject is sick of fighting. I'm going to have a look around this place. Green vegetation is a new one for me."

Siral, Korok, Axum, Laura, Sonza, all of Annika's older friends, they all had real identities in the real world. Annika had nothing but this dream-life. She'd died at age six, having spent the last two years of her life on a starship. She'd never gotten to live and never would.

* * *

Pressure was increasing exponentially for Seven, as she not only re-lived her feelings for Axum, but felt the weight of dozens of old friends who had been as close to her as family, now relying on her to save them. She had already failed three former drones, just a few months ago. Telling herself that her comrades would at least die as individuals rather than live as drones was something Seven could only do once.

"What's wrong Seven?"

Seven glanced up to see Mezoti watching her from behind a crate, her arms resting on the metal cover. Seven glanced back at the regeneration alcoves, where the boys were still "asleep." Seven had spent the last few hours organizing the Cargo Bay and postponing sleep, so wrapped in memories and anxiety that she hadn't noticed Mezoti leave her alcove.

"How long have you been awake Mezoti?" Seven asked.

"Just a few minutes. I had a bad dream." Mezoti was holding her hairbrush, the one previously owned by the late Ensign Lindsay Ballard. "I went to Unimatrix Zero, but it didn't match your descriptions. Instead it was a flower-swamp, from my homeworld. My family was there. At first." The girl didn't need to tell Seven how the dream had ended.

Seven searched for some words of comfort. What would Annika Hanson have said, to a friend in Unimatrix Zero?

"When your family..." Seven began, then rephrased. "My parents feel nothing. Their bodies are drones. But their suffering has ended."

After a moment, Mezoti said, "That Axum person you've been talking about the last few days, he was your mate, wasn't he."

Seven stared at the girl, who kept her eyes on the brush in her hands. "You're a perceptive individual, Mezoti."

"Not really. Naomi figured it out too. Your speech becomes delayed and your face flushes when Axum comes up in conversation, just as Naomi and myself do around Icheb."

Naomi Wildman would have run from the room rather than own up to her crush on the teenage Brunali. Mezoti on the other hand viewed her own "first crush" like a mild medical condition.

"I apologize if I've overstepped my bounds." Mezoti added.

"There is no need to apologize." Seven assured her. "It's true. Axum and I were...friends, for many years. He was already in Unimatrix Zero when I arrived. He was a mentor at first. He was—is—largely of El Aurian descent, and has a far longer lifespan than most Humanoids. He was very reluctant to change the nature of our relationship when I grew older, but a mutual friend encouraged us."

Seven could remember the giddiness with which Evthukl's violet face had lit up, when he'd first realized what a smart match Annika and Axum would make. And how the Kobali had laughed at their initial reactions of gross-out. Later, when Annika and Axum were a couple, Geminon the Vorta would often express his disdain for such a bizarre pairing, and openly wonder who had ever come up with such an idea as to match them up. Naturally, he believed no one when they told him the answer.

Seven had not seen Geminon or Evthukl in her new visits to Unimatrix Zero. She couldn't remember seeing Xin either, but given how often he changed identities in Unimatrix Zero, that meant practically nothing. Sonza of course had not been there; the Elaysian had disappeared a few years before Seven herself had been freed from the Collective.

Mezoti added, far too casually, "You appear to have similar reactions to Commander Chakotay."

It took a second to for Seven to remember where their conversation had last been.

"That _is_ overstepping your bounds," Seven warned in a hard voice.

"I'm sorry." Mezoti glanced around the cargo bay. "When we leave Voyager for the battle, is there anything you'd like me to bring for safe keeping?"

In a few hours' time, when Voyager went against the Borg, the ship's children would be in a shuttle-craft with a few adult guardians, concealed in a nebula some distance away. Seven had to think over the girl's question. Seven did not possess many material objects that she would admit to having a sentimental attachment to. She hadn't thought to retrieve her blanket or Fritz from the Raven before she and Tuvok evacuated the collapsing ship three years prior.

But the ship's database did contain her parents' journals.

"I will assemble some items for you to safeguard for me," Seven told Mezoti. Hesitantly, she added, "Thank you."

"You're welcome." Mezoti glanced at Icheb and the twins. "We should probably get back to regenerating."

Returning to Unimatrix Zero was the last thing Seven wanted, but it was inevitable.

"Agreed."

* * *

The transition from Seven to Annika didn't go as smoothly this time. When Annika briefed the Resistance on the pathogen that would awaken them all in reality, she spoke half with Seven of Nine's voice.

"You need to prepare the others," she warned. "When they leave their alcoves they may be startled, disoriented. But they have to behave like drones or we could all be exposed."

"Our ships are scattered across the galaxy!" Laura exclaimed. "Most of us will be the only drone on board who knows about this place."

Laura looked a far cry from the young ensign who'd appeared twelve years earlier. Now Captain Janeway's age, the former engineer seemed world-weary and cynical.

"She's right." Korok growled. "What can we hope to achieve?"

"We should each gather as much tactical data as we can." Axum said. "What kind of ship we're on, its armaments, location. Then we'll coordinate our efforts from here."

The group dispersed, Laura following Korok. The two had had some kind of a relationship, but Annika couldn't remember whether it was a platonic or romantic one. They didn't seem to regard each other as lovers. Their interactions reminded her more of Azan and Rebi, or Lt. Torres and Ensign Kim.

Axum clearly had more than a platonic relationship on his mind, now. And Seven knew it was largely her own fault. Axum had initially kept their past romance a secret from her, more than willing to let go of the past, until _she'd_ remembered, and kissed him. She knew the appropriate thing to do would be to apologize for her impulsive action, but her frustration with his newfound desire for romance was getting the better of her.

"If all goes well," he said quietly, "we'll be working very closely together."

In Seven of Nine's voice, Annika replied, "As colleagues, nothing more. Our previous friendship..."

"Yes?"

She floundered for a way to word her previous mistake, and explain that she wasn't ready to explore another romantic relationship at the time. But she ultimately blurted out, "It's irrelevant."

"Irrelevant," Axum said flatly. "Well, now that I'll be able to retain my memory, I'll keep that in mind."

A high wheezing sound cut through the air. Axum and Annika turned to see the lumpy, spotted face of Siral, his camel-like nose expanding and contracting like a balloon. This was what his species did to express irony, irritation or impatience.

"Are you two going to help spread the news to the other drones, or stand around flirting all day?"

"Leave them be Siral," Laura said, jogging back to the alien. "Come on, Korok needs help training people to use bat'leths."

"We weren't flirting and we're not a couple." Annika told Siral harshly.

Siral looked unconvinced. But Laura's hand came up diplomatically.

"Hey, I've been there."

Annika's brow furrowed. "Not with Axum," she glanced at her former mate.

"No. With Korok. You don't remember?"

"No, I—" Suddenly, a memory flew back to her: Annika, as a teenager, exploring some caves with friends, and stumbling upon Laura and Korok doing the nasty. "Yes, I think I remember. You two didn't last long."

Laura nodded. "Korok's a lot of fun, but not my—"

"What's that?" Annika pointed to Laura's forearm.

Axum followed Annika's gaze. "That wasn't there before."

Laura lifted her forearm to glance at the Borg designation tattooed across her arm, and made a dismissive face. Then she felt for something under her black vest, which she apparently found. She opened the vest to reveal an outdated Starfleet combadge on the red fabric beneath. It was of an older design, the combadge Laura had worn back at Wolf 359.

"Seems my fighting spirt is back full throttle." Laura smiled to herself. "Let's get moving, before more drones show up. They got Vaxo, not too long ago."

Annika stopped and stared at Laura. Vaxo, Annika's Talaxian childhood friend. He'd been one of those re-assimilated in the last few days. And she hadn't even known who he was at the time.

Axum added ruefully, "Xin too."

"Correction," a chipper female voice came from behind them. "They got _Ali_ Xin."

A red-haired Trill whose dark spots contrasted against her pale skin joined the group. Axum, Laura, Siral and Annika stared at her with stunned relief.

"Xin!" Annika gasped, as the Trill crushed her in a hug.

Xin glanced mischievously at the four of them. "I was right there five minutes ago, at the meeting. None of you noticed me."

"Your face would be easier to remember if it didn't change so often," Annika countered. "But I remember, after Sonza vanished, you taught me how to play some Trill game, to get my mind off it."

"Wild Sticks." Xin said. "Actually, it was Dassner Xin who taught you that."

"Dassner _started_ it," Annika corrected. "Then when you returned as Kazel Xin, you still remembered that 'Dassner' had begun teaching me, and carried on."

"Xin," Axum stared at the Trill, "You're the first person who's returned after being assimilated!"

"They think they've 'cured' me." Xin bobbed her eyebrows. "But a joined Trill knows a thing or two about burying memories. We have all kinds of rituals for keeping them suppressed and calling them back up."

As the five of them made their way down a large hill towards the river, Annika asked about other comrades, and received a lot of crushing news. Tov, the dark El Aurian who'd helped raise Annika, was dead, killed during the war with Species 8472. Wachow and N'Lor had gone traveling together some years ago, with the intent of seeing how far Unimatrix Zero extended, and none of Annika's current friends had seen either of them in the last year. Assuming the Orion and Cardassian were still alive, they might not even know there was a Resistance. Evthukl /Geminon, the Kobali/Vorta man, had experienced some kind of emotional breakdown a few years after Seven had been liberated from the Collective, and gone questing off into the forest, never to be seen again. But Unimatrix Zero was enormous, perhaps infinite. "One in a million" drones were still a good million or so. Who knew how many old friends she didn't remember were somewhere out there, with no idea that Unimatrix Zero was even in danger.

"Shlenka and Sh'Mi are alright," Laura said, her arms swinging beside her. "Deshmil's been missing for a while. Though knowing him, there's a good chance he's hibernating at the bottom of the...lake..." Laura's eyes were fixed on something down near the river, and she rushed down the hill. Axum, Annika, Siral and Xin followed.

Korok stood in the shallow water, battling a Borg drone with his bat'leth. The Klingon was backing the drone towards a thick waterfall, no doubt hoping the force of the water would knock it down long enough for a killing strike. But the torrents of water had no effect on the drone, who knocked the bat'leth clean out of the Klingon's hands, sending it spinning through the air. Annika pulled Axum to the ground just in time to save him from being decapitated by that bat'leth a second time. The giant blade wound up lodged in a tree, inches from Siral's face. Siral made a sound like a dying targ, then took hold of the bat'leth and began trying to yank it out of the tree.

Back in the water, Korok stopped the drone's assimilation hand, the tubules just inches from his face. While they struggled, a shape came soaring down the waterfall, which had to be at least four stories high. Both Korok and the drone were knocked into the water, the drone's assimilation arm just missing Korok. A Brunali woman shot up from the water, dark hair swinging around her face, and raised a knife that seemed to be carved from some massive animal's tooth. As soon as the drone sat up in the water, she roared through her teeth and brought the knife into its pale head, the gills on each side of her nose-crest flaring.

As the drone vanished, Korok locked eyes with the hawk-faced woman. "You are a skilled warrior."

"No," she replied in a quiet, almost timid sounding voice, as she sheathed her knife in her belt. "Just a survivor. Remala."

A way up the hill, Siral was still attempting to free Korok's bat'leth from the tree it was lodged in, now with Xin and Laura's help.

Korok eyed up the Brunali. "It appears I owe you my life, Remala."

Annika had once said something similar to Axum.

It had been right after returning to the Collective, after that incident when she, and three other drones from her unimatrix, had been temporarily severed from the Hive Mind. Once in Unimatrix Zero again, Annika—barely eighteen—had realized fully what she'd done to those three people, who had been millimeters away from freedom.

* * *

Annika gazed over the edge of the cliff. Miles below, the forest looked like the backdrop of one of Aunt Irene's train sets.

Marika, P'Chan, and whatsit would never have the luxury of the individuality Annika was now basking in, and didn't deserve. She couldn't even remember the third man's name, she thought shamefully, and now neither could he.

"Annika!" a voice behind her called.

That was the push she needed. Annika leapt over the edge.

For a while it was like skydiving. Then the ground came rushing towards her, the sensation of falling to her death unsettlingly real, wind screaming in her ears. The pain lasted less than a second—

And then she was back in the forest.

Seven of Nine's regeneration cycle had been interrupted by what the Borg interpreted as a malfunction. The drone had then moved on to another alcove, and resumed regenerating.

How many more times would a drone have to fail to regenerate before it was declared defective and dismantled?

"Annika!" Axum rushed out of the forest.

Annika met his brown eyes, then turned and ran towards the edge of the cliff. Axum barreled into her, knocking her into the grass.

"Get off me!"

"Annika, do you realize what will happen, if you kill yourself that many times in a row? You'll kill yourself for real!"

"I'm counting on it."

" _No!_ Annika,"

"I _have_ to! I can't—I have no right—"

Tearfully, she told her mentor and friend what she'd done.

"Annika," Axum gripped her shoulders, locking eyes with her. "I assimilated my own son. Jathor. Only a child, crying for his Papa. Now I'm here, and he's not."

She heaved, staring at him through wet eyes. Somehow, in a very twisted way, that took a massive weight off of Annika's chest.

"And before that, we fled El-Auria, leaving so many family and friends behind to die or be assimilated. My Cardassian grandfather, Skallad, he escaped the Union with his friends as an adolescent. His entire family was killed by the Union not long after."

Annika knew about the survivor's guilt Axum had about fleeing El-Auria, and about his grandfather's family being killed off by the Cardassian Union. But he'd never told her what he'd just said about his son.

Axum walked her back into the woods with his arm around her comfortingly, while Annika's tears slowed to sniffles.

"You two make a brilliant couple!"

They both looked up to see a smiling purple face in the trees. Their friend Evthukl came sprinting over to them. "Yes, I can't believe I didn't see it before!"

Axum and Annika both laughed nervously.

"There might be a slight age difference," Annika said.

Axum added, "I'm old enough to be her great-great-great-great...great...well I'm a very old man."

Evthukl gave a twitching Kobali shrug. "Too old is better than too young."

"We're not dating." Axum said firmly.

But it would end up being Annika who'd initiated the relationship. She and everyone else had to jump through hoops to convince Axum to give it a chance. And they were together for six years. She lost her virginity to him, in Unimatrix Zero.

"I owe you my life, Axum," she said that night. "In so many ways."

Maybe four years into the relationship, Annika and Axum had adopted a Wysanti infant that turned up in the bushes. They named him Magnus, after Annika's father. Magnus had just begun to learn how to talk when he suddenly vanished and didn't return. It was eventually discovered that the baby's vessel had been obliterated by some powerful alien force it had tried to assimilate. It had taken months for Annika just to be functional again after that loss. Axum was able to mostly keep it together only because he'd lost so many children before. Of course, the couple never fully recovered, and their paranoia for the other children they took under their wing increased exponentially.

The last time Annika and Axum had seen each other before she left the Collective was when they were welcoming another young new arrival.

"It's alright," Annika told the small Romulan girl. "You're safe here. What's your name?"

Timidly, the girl replied, "T'Rifka."

Annika and Axum exchanged a relieved glance. It seemed this kid was going to be alright, emotionally at least.

Gazing up at Annika the girl asked, "What's your name?"

Annika smiled warmly. "An—"

The forest faded away, and Seven of Nine Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero-One completed her regeneration cycle. The Collective's new orders were with her as soon as her eyes opened. Seven of Nine made her way across the metal floor to the doorway, through which she could perceive the two figures awaiting her approach. Both Starfleet officers: one a captain, Human, female; the other Vulcan, male, lieutenant. Seven of Nine stopped in the doorway, her eyepiece fixed on the Human captain.

"I speak for the Borg."

* * *

" _Chakotay to Seven of Nine_."

Her regeneration cycle complete, Seven tapped her combadge. "Seven of Nine here."

" _I hope I'm not rushing you. The Doctor told me what time your regeneration cycle would end, and I need you in Astrometrics. The away team's about to leave."_

"On my way."

The Commander's soft yet powerful voice still had an effect on her. Axum's had too, once. Seven had memories of feelings for Axum, and current ones for Chakotay. But she'd known Axum for eighteen years, had been romantically involved with him for six, and had adopted and lost a baby with him. Why weren't the feelings coming back now? Would she fall irrevocably in love with Axum once her memories of Unimatrix Zero fully returned? At the moment she both missed Axum, and felt wrong with him. The duality was confusing and unpleasant to say the least.

Also unpleasant was the thought of what Captain Janeway, Commander Tuvok and Lt. Torres were about to undergo. Of all people onboard, Seven felt she had particularly been a burden on those three. And now they were undergoing the process of assimilation for her.

Neelix entered Astrometrics at 1200 hours, with a hot meal concealed in a container. Naturally she attempted to dissuade him from bringing her lunch, but gave in when he revealed that it was the "Delta Quadrant soufflé" he knew she'd taken a liking to. What the Talaxian had managed to do with the eggs, berries, and plants of half a dozen Delta Quadrant worlds tasted like a surreal version of something Aunt Irene might have made.

"Sam and Marla have left with the children in the shuttlecraft," Neelix said. "I'm sure they'll be fine. Lt. Carrey is worried about Samantha though."

It was such an irony for Neelix to bring up the engineer and xenobiologist, she almost wondered if the Talaxian knew something about her at the moment. It was scuttlebutt around the ship that Ensign Wildman and Lt. Carrey had been having an on-and-off affair for years, despite both having spouses back home. Did Neelix know that Seven, too, had feelings for two people?

"I'm sure he's simply protective," Seven said, "having a family back home."

Seven chewed her Delta Quadrant Soufflé, deep in thought. At her insistence, Neelix joined her in consuming the dish.

"I remember helping Kes plant those berries," Neelix said offhandedly.

"Neelix," Seven asked quietly, "when you parted with Kes, were you...cross with her, for misleading you?"

Neelix seemed honestly confused. "She never misled me. We had a relationship. Relationships sometimes— _usually_ —don't work out. At least among most species. It's normal to date several people before you find the one. Though, not at the same time, usually."

"In Unimatrix Zero, there is a man...we were involved, romantically...now I...I have no idea how I feel."

"You'll never know until you give it a try," Neelix said. "If you decide he's not for you anymore, he'll understand...even if not right away."

She turned Neelix's advice over in her mind for the next several hours, long after the Talaxian had left. She'd just managed to put the entire situation from her mind when Commander Chakotay entered Astrometrics, and decided it was time for her to regenerate again.

"I want you inside Unimatrix Zero. When the virus is released, your friends there will be the first to know." When she didn't reply, he added, "Problem?"

"No. But I wouldn't call them my friends."

"Acquaintances then. If you're having issues with these people I suggest you set them aside."

Seven was suddenly struck by how similar Chakotay and Axum were. Both were passionate fighters for justice, with the remarkable ability to set their emotions aside during times of crisis. Seven had ruined that for Axum when she'd impulsively kissed him.

But none of this was relevant now, in the mission to save Unimatrix Zero and the away team.

Locking eyes with Chakotay, she replied, "Understood."

* * *

She had ended up doing the exact opposite of what the Commander advised. The next time Annika had gone to Unimatrix Zero after talking with Chakotay, she opened up to Axum, reminiscing about their time together, and finally sharing in a very familiar kiss. But Axum, it turned out, was on a cube in the Beta Quadrant, exploring the edge of Fluidic Space.

And in a few moments, they wouldn't even have Unimatrix Zero anymore.

As soon as everyone understood the covert order Captain Janeway had given the crew, Seven rushed back to her cargo bay, to see Axum one last time.

Unimatrix Zero was flickering, with gaping glowing holes revealing the halls of a Borg vessel, as if Unimatrix Zero had been a holo-simulation. The visuals made little sense, but it probably had something to do with the unconscious memories of millions of drones left behind in the now collapsing virtual world. Glancing around, she thought she saw her raven, flickering in the sky, but it was impossible to tell for sure.

Her eyes turned to a clearing in the trees, and she realized she was standing just a few feet from the cliff where Axum had once talked her out of suicide. He was there now, standing at the edge, staring at the collapsing scenery below. She hurried over to him.

"You shouldn't be here," Axum said.

"Neither should you."

They hugged.

"I've wasted our time together," Annika began, her voice cracking.

"No, you didn't. It gave us a chance to fall in love again."

 _But have we?_ She wasn't ready to even begin speculating on whether Axum was "the one." And now she'd never find out.

"We've lost our only way to be together."

"No," Axum assured her. "I'll find you."

"Axum,"

"I'll find you," he repeated, before vanishing.

Seven awoke feeling like she'd just returned from a very turbulent shuttlecraft ride.

Neither she nor Axum had said the words "I love you." And she didn't know if the emotion filling her now was relief or regret.

* * *

While the away team recovered in Sickbay, Chakotay, Seven, and Lt. Ayala gathered in Astrometrics for some final words with General Korok. An assimilated Klingon was quite a site. The lack of hair and presence of a Borg eye piece did little to diminish the immediately recognizable face and presence of a Klingon.

"I'm sorry Commander," the general replied. "But it appears that full transwarp capabilities require a connection to the Hive mind. Now that my sphere has been disconnected, I cannot help you or myself return home."

"But you're welcome to join us in our journey back," Chakotay invited. "I'm sure Captain Janeway wouldn't mind a crewmember with tactical experience against the Borg."

The Klingon grinned toothily. "Perhaps not. But my friends from Unimatrix Zero need me. They're scattered across the galaxy. We'll need to rendezvous in some way to continue delivering damage to the Collective. In any case, it would appear you have a reasonably capable Klingon in your crew already."

"I'll be sure to tell B'Elanna you said so," Chakotay said. "I think she'll appreciate it."

The Klingon's wide fierce eye and metallic disk moved to Seven. "Annika, I'm sorry to report that our friend Siral was aboard one of the vessels the Queen destroyed."

Seven froze, just for a second. She'd last seen Siral laughing with her other friends, trying to pull that bat'leth from the tree. The former drone and subject of the Klingon Empire had been right; he'd never achieved freedom.

"He died fighting the Borg," Korok assured her. "If there was ever a place in Sto-vo-Kor for a non-Klingon, it's for Siral. Though I doubt he would accept the honor."

"His people did not believe in an afterlife," Seven recalled. "But he made certain to enjoy the one he had."

The Klingon continued, "I have been contacted by a vessel in control of two of our comrades. One is our old friend Wachow. The other is a Jem'Hadar I've never met. They'll rendezvous with me in a few days."

Wachow, the transgendered Orion man Annika had known in Unimatrix Zero, was now awake and back in his old, female body. How he would fare, and whether he and N'Lor still stood a chance as a couple, was something Seven couldn't begin to guess. She felt both guilt and relief for not being able to help any of her old friends through this time. And then more guilt, for being relieved.

"When you see Wachow," Seven said, "tell him Annika said hello."

"Is there anything you'd like me to tell Axum, should I ever find myself in contact with him?"

Seven just stopped herself from glancing at Chakotay. What _could_ she tell Axum? "I love him" would likely have been a lie. She had no idea what her feelings for anyone were anymore.

Floundering for something both sincere and safe, she replied, "Tell him...tell him I won't forget him."

"I will." The Klingon replied.

* * *

The away team had almost completely recovered, physically at least. Their implants were gone, skin pigmentation returned, and even sporting hair again. Seven noted that B'Elanna's hairstyle had changed, now looking almost identical to the captain's.

"Hello Seven," B'Elanna shook out her hair. "What do you think of the new look?"

Seven lifted an eyebrow that would've pleased Tuvok, had he been awake. "It is strikingly familiar."

The women snickered, while the Doctor began recording his medical log. (Apparently Tuvok's recovery would take more time than the captain and Lt. Torres.')

The Captain groaned. "The Doctor removed my spinal clamps but it'll be a while before I'm playing hoverball again. If I ever imply it's been easy on you these last few years, remind me about today."

"Noted." Seven replied.

"Well," the Captain said, "Unimatrix Zero may be gone but it looks like the resistance is alive and kicking. With any luck, the Collective may never be the same."

"Korok said he would try to maintain contact, keep us informed."

"Have you heard from your friend?"

"No. But I don't expect to. Axum's vessel is in a remote sector of the Beta Quadrant."

The thought of Axum alone on a Borg vessel near or in Fluidic Space was unsettling. But he'd escaped the Borg countless times before his assimilation, and had over three centuries of experience and adventures to fall back on. If anyone could evade the Borg again it was Axum. And if anyone had the power to move on after realizing he wasn't going to be with Annika forever, it was Axum. And if there was a former mate she could continue a friendship with, should they meet in person someday, it was undoubtedly Axum.

Earlier that day, Harry Kim had briefly consoled Seven, reminding her that he too had recently been reunited with an old lover, only to lose her again. Harry had repeated Lindsay Ballard's advice to enjoy life, and Seven decided she would do her best to oblige.

Her relationship with Axum, though not likely to ever continue, had been far from a waste. Seven had become more human in the last few days than she'd been in the last few years combined.

"If I ever imply that he was nothing more than a friend," she told Captain Janeway with complete sincerity, "remind me about today."

* * *

 **A/N: Crediting Scifiromance for her ideas is a bit complicated. See, a while back I wrote a fic called "Sleepwalking," for which I invented several background characters to populate Unimatrix Zero. Most of them were little more than their names and species. These include T'Nara, Sh'Mi, and Nezmin. Scifiromance then used them in her amazingly written story "In Thy Name," where she fleshed them out as three-dimensional characters, while adding a few of her own. Then she gave me permission to use** _ **her**_ **take on those characters for my other stories. So basically, T'Nara, Nezmin, etc. are the result of fan-fic incest. Yuck.**

 **Korok's Brunali love interest Remala is Scifiromance's character.**

 **I highly recommend Scifiromance to anyone who wants an emotional story that's a bit more serious than the silliness I normally.**


	2. Impossible Things

**A/N: I don't own "Star Trek: Voyager."**

* * *

B'Elanna heard the doors hiss opened but kept her eyes closed. She hoped it was Tuvok, unsure how Seven of Nine would react to the sight of B'Elanna Torres meditating. The captain was still at her desk, pouring over reports or something. Janeway had seemed some combination of surprised and amused when B'Elanna had asked if she'd mind her meditating for a few minutes until Seven and Tuvok arrived, and B'Elanna was doing her best to beat down her embarrassment.

"Captain," Seven's voice betrayed no change from its usual tone. "Lt. Torres."

"Hello Seven," the Captain greeted. "We're still waiting on Commander Tuvok. He's got a few minutes yet."

"How are you doing Seven," B'Elanna asked quietly, her eyes still shut.

"Well." Seven replied. "And you?"

"I'm not sure," the half-Klingon replied. "How're you feeling about taking on the Borg Queen, Seven? Scared or excited?"

"Guilty."

B'Elanna's eyes opened. Seven stood before her in her sapphire blue biosuit, not looking surprised at all to find the half-Klingon meditating. Come to think of it, Seven would be one of the first people to understand the sense in B'Elanna meditating, and probably even deduced that she'd been taking lessons from Tuvok.

"You're saving billions of lives, Seven," B'Elanna pointed out.

"We'll all have some degree of survivor's guilt when this is over," Captain Janeway assured Seven softly. "Most of us have had it for a while, with all the casualties Voyager's endured."

Seven took a deep breath. "I have been an... inconvenience to this ship since my arrival. At several points I even endangered it. Now you three will be allowing yourselves to be assimilated, on my behalf."

B'Elanna could read the subtext: _I've been a pain in your ass for the last three years Lieutenant, and now said ass is about to be pumped with Borg nanoprobes and covered with a glossy chrome exoskeleton._

"Seven," Captain Janeway replied with a wry smile, "Nothing personal. But we're not getting ourselves assimilated and endangering the ship just for you. We're answering a distress call to save millions of lives, and hopefully save billions more by delivering a crippling blow to the greatest known threat to the galaxy. And the fact that you've saved every life on this ship a hundred times over in a hundred different ways has helped balance things out just a little."

Seven's human eyebrow crept upward, and B'Elanna could see that the former drone was able to sense the humor in the captain's reply.

Seven pointed out, "You keep Naomi Wildman and the dronelings aboard as well."

After a moment, the captain replied, "They say 'cuteness' is actually a survival mechanism."

The friendly banter was interrupted by the hiss of the doors as Tuvok entered. Of all members of the away team, Tuvok no doubt needed the most time to prepare. Given how many times his mind had been taken over or broken, it had taken a bit of convincing for Captain Janeway to allow the Vulcan to come along. But there was no one else in security who had the resolve and experience Tuvok had. The Vulcan had even been aboard a Borg cube before, when he and the captain first met Seven.

The purpose of this little meeting was for Seven to brief the away team on what to expect during the assimilation process. All three members were pleasantly surprised to find that this act would be a bit easier to pull off than they'd initially thought.

"It's normal during the assimilation process for the subjects to move, voluntarily or otherwise." Seven said. "It would be far more suspicious to resist reacting to uncomfortable sensations than to simply let yourself twitch or kick."

"So basically the exact opposite of a dental exam in Sickbay," B'Elanna mused dryly.

Seven made a subtle face as if silently agreeing with her. "Immobility will become easier once you are fully encased in your exoskeletons."

Tuvok spoke for the first time since arriving. "Is there any way to predict what, specifically, will be done to us?"

"There are patterns to the different methods the Borg use to assimilate. Tubes will be inserted in or near areas with deposits of body-fat."

"I always wondered why female drones were allowed to keep their busts," B'Elanna muttered. "Well someone's got to ask; how do we know if they're gonna take off an arm or an eyeball?"

"Those features are generally assigned to drones designed for specific purposes, such as tactical drones or repair drones. Were this a normal assimilation you would almost certainly lose both 'an arm and an eyeball' Lieutenant, as you'd be designated either a tactical or engineering drone. The Doctor's pathogen, in addition to protecting your higher brain functions, will also mask your abilities from the Collective, causing you to appear weaker in mind and body than you really are."

Janeway's blue eyes were widening as she considered it. " _That_ 's why you and the Borg children still have all your own hands."

"I was designated a science drone when I emerged from the maturation camber, and equip with an ocular implant to assist in my tasks. Drones liberated while still in their maturation chambers generally have far less permanent damage done to their bodies."

The briefing lasted less than twenty minutes. The entire time, something ate at B'Elanna, and she was worried Seven would vanish before she got a chance to address it. Luckily, she was able to block the drone in the hallway, as they were all leaving the Ready Room.

"Seven," she said, as the captain and Tuvok vanished around the corner, "This mission is _my_ attempt at making up for the way _I_ treated _you_ all these years."

Seven's blank stare would've been impossible to read if B'Elanna hadn't been getting to know her for three years. Seven was surprised. Which was something to mark on the calendar.

B'Elanna searched for something else to say, but had nothing. Figuring Seven wouldn't take offense, B'Elanna ended it there, and headed back for her quarters.

* * *

"B'Elanna you can't seriously be considering this!" Tom exclaimed.

"This from the man who once volunteered to get captured by Seska and navigate a Kazon vessel alone."

Tom scoffed. "Fighting one ship full of walking mushrooms led by an unstable Cardassian isn't quite the same as allowing yourself to be _assimilated_!"

"Don't worry," B'Elanna teased. "Seven and Icheb only retain the implants they do because of how long they were drones. You'll have your beautiful half-monster girl back soon enough."

"What's gotten into you lately?" Tom squinted, following her around the room. "First you recreate a near-death experience because you're a Born-Again Klingon, and now you're getting a Borg makeover?"

"Well I'm not gonna let all this Klingon spunk go to waste." She gathered up her red pajamas and headed to the washroom to change. "I have an ability, and that's the ability to get pissed off. My anger can be a powerful tool if wielded properly."

"You sound like Tuvok."

"Do I."

Memories of her first meditation with Tuvok set off a train of thought that ended with an image of Tuvok as a stern-faced child, with ears too large for him. She let out a short laugh.

"What?"

"Nothing," she shook her head, changing into her pajamas.

She emerged from the bathroom to find her boyfriend holding the stuffed animal she'd never let anyone but Tom know about.

"You gonna bring Toby?"

"No!" B'Elanna took a hold of Toby, but kept the stuffed targ in Tom's hands. "You're priority is to make sure nothing happens to Toby."

Tom rolled his eyes. "If someone had told me six years ago I'd be guarding B'Elanna's stuffed targ for her while she voluntarily got assimilated..."

"Listen, Tom," B'Elanna said. "I know something could go wrong, and even if it doesn't I'm about to get really uncomfortable for several hours. So I want this night to be...good."

Tom grimaced, and admitted, "Me too."

They had grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup while watching an old cartoon B'Elanna had indirectly admitted to taking a liking to ("Speedy Gonzalez") and then had the most amazing sex since that night after her return from Gre'thor.

Before bed, B'Eanna stood before the washroom mirror, thinking over her mission. She was going to lose her hair. Much of the crew had expressed that this perm was the best her hair had ever looked. She normally made extra efforts to smooth her natural Klingon frizz, even back in the Maquis (granted, hair treatment hardly took any "effort" in the 24th Century). At Tom's suggestion she'd forgone the treatment shortly before the Equinox popped up, and after making peace with her Klingon half a month or so later, she'd decided to keep the hair. No, not peace, there was no "peace" with Klingons; her human and Klingon half had made an alliance.

" _What do you want me to be_?" she remembered screaming at her visions.

The answer had been absurdly, embarrassingly, simple. In B'Elanna's defense, she'd had no reason to think that her mother didn't want her to be a good Klingon, or that Captain Janeway didn't want her to be a good Starfleet officer. But as Chakotay would point out (did point out, in Gre'thor), it wasn't really her friends and family she was asking, it was herself. She'd spent her entire life failing to meet or rebelling against everyone else's expectations, and had buried herself without realizing it.

Just because her parents had separated didn't mean she had to. Tuvok had taught her how to control the Klingon. The Klingon was going to help the engineer aboard the Borg cube.

B'Elanna closed her eyes and prayed to Kahless. She'd done so on and off most of her life, never literally believing a Klingon in the sky was listening, but more for therapeutic purposes.

 _Kahless. I've finally stopped hating my true self, and now I'm about to risk losing it._ Thirty-one years of sorting out her mind, only to be assimilated, would be a cruel irony to say the least.

Thirty-one. _Am I actually thirty-one?_

* * *

B'Elanna's heart was pounding hard enough to make the sensation of being transported even stranger than usual, leaving the Delta Flyer and entering the Borg cube between heartbeats. It was like riding a wave in the ocean. No one on the team needed acting lessons to pull off the charade that they were terrified of being assimilated, because all three of them were scared shitless. No amount of rehearsals on the holodeck could prepare any of them for this. It was only B'Elanna's Klingon strength that kept her hands from visibly shaking as they gripped the phaser rifle.

As the Borg approached the team, B'Elanna replayed Chakotay's last bit of advice before seeing her off: "Pretend they're Cardassians."

She thought of the three Cardassians that had tried to gang-rape her, the fateful day Chakotay saved her life over a decade ago, when they'd first met. But she couldn't see their faces anymore, traumatizing as the experience had been. She couldn't remember any of the Cardassians she'd fought in the Maquis with enough clarity to bring up the rage needed. So she pictured Crel Mosset, the butcher whose hologram had saved B'Elanna's life against her wishes; Gul Dukat, the man responsible for the Maquis' destruction; and Seska, her false "best friend." And before she even realized she was doing it, B'Elanna became a Klingon warrior, using her phaser-rifle as a makeshift bat'leth, slamming a Borg drone in the face and knocking another in the side of the head.

The Borg wound up using her "bat'leth" to pin her against the wall. She was still struggling against it when one of them stuck its tubes into the side of her neck. She barred her teeth against the pain, as the nanoprobes sped through her. The feeling was not unlike those alien teeth biting into her neck, when that insectoid had latched onto her body the previous year. The memory of the incident fueled her anger, so much that she felt that boiling headache she only got during the worst of rages, hot flashes sliding along her cranial ridges like they did when she had a fever.

And then the warmth left her body, as her skin lost its pigment, and implants erupted all over her.

No more anger. Time to act Borg.

With great effort, she pushed Crel Mosset from her mind, and focused as hard as she could on the Malon freighter, where she'd managed to beat her rage down long enough to attempt talking peace into the undead Malon. That mission had been a success.

"She _can't_ be Chief Engineer!" Joe Carrey had once argued with Sam Wildman in the hallway, six years ago, when the position was still up for grabs. "She's half-Klingon, she can't control her temper! It's not possible!"

In forth grade B'Elanna's class had read "Alice in Wonderland," and then took a field trip to the local theater to see the new film adaptation—the one where Alice was voiced by that actress who would grow up to play the bitchy maid in the Victorian horror program, and that Vulcan actor voicing the hookah-smoking caterpillar. (Tom would probably know their names.)

"S _ometimes_ ," Alice's voice rang through B'Elanna's memory, " _I believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast_."

With grim humor, B'Elanna said to herself, as the Borg dragged her limp body through the cube, _Sometimes, I believe as many as six impossible things before assimilation._

She couldn't see where they had taken Capitan Janeway or Tuvok.

 _One: A half-Klingon Maquis will serve under, and be friends with, a Federation captain and a Vulcan Federation spy._

A pair of circular double-doors slid opened, revealing an assimilation chamber. B'Elanna was afraid to be caught looking around, despite Seven's reassurance that such behavior was normal during the assimilation process and would not arouse suspicion. The two drones holding her arms dragged her to a table. Most newly assimilated drones would simply walk to the operating table themselves, but going limp was common enough, and much easier to act.

When they dumped her on the table, her head hit the metal hard enough to force her to bear her teeth to keep from crying out.

A Borg arm hovered over her with a spinning blade at the end. Supposedly, the Doctor's pathogen would reduce pain, in addition to tricking the Borg into thinking that none of the team were fit for any duty that required the removal of an eye or limb. When the blade ran down her midsection she was convinced she was being dissected, until she saw her clothes being pulled away, to reveal a pale and assimilated but safely intact body.

 _Two: On a ship filled with gorgeous women, Tom Paris will choose B'Elanna Torres, and stay with her for three years._

She wasn't able to keep quiet, and roared out with pain at several instances. She was sure she'd given herself away, and doomed the entire mission. But in fact, all she'd done was convince the Borg that this new drone was having problems with its vocals. The one good thing about having your throat cut opened was that you couldn't scream even if you wanted to. After the device had been fit into her throat, the drones stared down at her, as if expecting something. They wanted to see it had worked, probably. The Collective likely thought it was sending mental commands to its new half-Klingon drone, telling it to say something. Improvising, B'Elanna let out the most monotone "Aaaaaaah," she could manage. Her own voice echoed mechanically, like something out of one of Tom's B-movies. Come to think of it, Tom's monster movie obsession was probably not doing his worry for her any favors, right now.

But the Borg bought her performance, and continued working.

 _Three: A Borg drone can be severed and rehabilitated by a lone ship crewed by less than two-hundred, a third of which have no Starfleet training._

 _Four:_

B'Elanna struggled to think of a fourth one. God, it hurt. She could feel her body changing. Her hair falling out. She'd felt her body undergo rapid change before. When? When had anything like that happened?

Oh. Right.

 _Four: A person can be split into two different people, one Klingon and one Human. And be put back together._

She recalled lying in Sickbay after being rescued from the Vidiians, the Doctor inserting DNA from her dead Klingon counterpart. Overnight, she felt her smooth forehead bunch up and rise back into her cranial ridges. Now her ridges were in pain, swollen with Borg nanoprobes.

 _So I've been a Klingon, a Human, and now a Borg. Any other B'Elannas care to pop up?_

And that reminded her:

 _Five: There's another universe where the Federation is an evil empire, and Commander Spock had a beard._

Her head felt swollen. B'Elanna remembered how Seven of Nine's bald head had looked unnaturally swollen as a Borg drone. They started drilling into the side of B'Elanna's skull, which courtesy the Doctor's pathogen, felt strange, but not all that painful. She kept her eyes on the ceiling above her.

 _Six: I can complete this mission._

* * *

B'Elanna checked to make sure no real drones were within sight, and then punched the wall angrily. She did no damage, except to her hand. No opened wounds, just a bit of pain. Sans that little slip, she was doing a great job staying in control. Unfortunately, a perfectly controlled B'Elanna couldn't stop Captain Janeway from getting captured, or Tuvok from going bananas (again). The Borg were in the Vulcan's brain, and the Captain was in some lower section of the cube. B'Elanna had managed to blend enough to avoid capture, and was now making attempts to monitor her comrades on any consoles she could hack into when the Borg weren't looking.

If there was a time to make the full transition from self-loathing to egomania, now was definitely not it, but B'Elanna couldn't help herself. She'd wielded her anger as a perfectly controlled weapon when needed, kept it bottled, and her engineering skills had been kicking ass all night. She was ecstatic. Taking down the Borg, in some strange way, compensated for the loss of the Maquis, in _so many_ ways.

Browsing the tiny viewscreens, B'Elanna perked up when she noticed a Borg vessel firing on the cube she was standing in. A sphere, where one of the rogue drones had apparently taken control. Scanning the sphere, B'Elanna felt her jaw literally drop when she realized that the liberated drone who'd taken control was a Klingon. Along with Voyager, the Klingon was kicking the Borg Queen's putrid metal ass.

She recognized the battle tactics the Klingon was using. She'd been forced to study all manner of fighting styles and tactical techniques in that Klingon monastery her mother put her in as a teenager. But how the hell had a single liberated drone taken over an entire Borg sphere?

The channel suddenly shut off. B'Elanna turned to see a drone at a nearby station, working on something. Trying to alert the Collective of a half-Klingon infiltrator, perhaps.

Going full-Klingon, B'Elanna searched for any immediate object that could be converted into a bat'leth. Fortunately Borg architects were strangely fond of inefficiently artistic looking beams and doorways, that often included short metal poles. Thinking of the Maquis, B'Elanna took hold of one short pole and ripped it clean out, with a strength that startled herself. Then she ran towards the drone, her heavy Borg exoskeleton barely weighing her down, and took it down with two quick smacks to its head with her weapon. It was Borg, but so was she, and she was a half-Klingon Borg. Her strength, at the moment, was superior. The drone went down, and B'Elanna activated a small view screen on the consol.

The sphere was still firing on the cube. She ran another quick scan on the sphere. He was using a technique similar to the Klingon cloaking devices, that somehow masked the higher commands of the Collective from the population aboard this cube, leaving the drones onboard with no choice but to take orders from the one individual mind they did have contact with, the Klingon. But if the Klingon was severed from the Collective, how was he linked to them? Did he know how to perform a neural link? Of course he did, if he retained his memories of the Collective as Seven did.

Both the Klingon and engineer in B'Elanna watched in stunned marvel as the sphere continued to massacre the cube, with help from Voyager.

Her eyes were still locked on the battle when the blue tingle of the transporter beam overtook her vision, and she found herself kneeling next to Janeway and Tuvok in Voyager's transporter room.

* * *

"Whaddaya think, too Starfleet-mom?" B'Elanna asked half-seriously, turning her head to show Tom her new hairstyle.

"Starfleet mom" was a slang term back at the Academy.

Her boyfriend and nurse hovered over her, still not over the shock of everything that had just happened. "You look great no matter what," Tom said quietly.

B'Elanna laughed, laying back in her biobed. "Even as a drone?"

"Well, you look a little better with hair." Tom said. "And metal doesn't really suit you."

"Too Satan's robot?"

"With a touch of Chaotica, minus the facial hair."

Captain Janeway was in a nearby bed, having a hushed conversation with Seven about Unimatrix Zero and the new Borg resistance movement. Tuvok was still asleep, being monitored by the Doctor. Next to the captain's bed, with her book and canister of coffee, sat the small blue light that had previously been attached to the side of her head, currently deactivated. B'Elanna reached over to the small bedside tray the Doctor had set for her, and picked up her own souvenir: a small, vaguely diamond-shaped device that could fit in the palm of her hand.

"My subvocal processor," B'Elanna examined the device, and its segmented designs. "Looks like a God's Eye, don't you think?"

"I remember making those things in grade school," Tom said.

"I used to make one every Christmas, when we visited Grandma Torres. She'd hang it on the tree. I don't know, you think Gerron could get a hook attached to this thing, so I can hang it on my wall?"

"He could probably make it a necklace." Tom said. "That Bajoran must be having a field day with all that Borg scrap."

"I hear he's trying to make a menorah for Brooks," B'Elanna laughed. "I donated my cranial tube to the cause."

" _That_ I have to see." Tom's voice softened. "B'Elanna, if there's anything you need to get off your chest, day or night,"

"I'm fine Tom," she assured him. "It's not the first time my body's undergone a dramatic mutilation." She sighed. "Let's see, I've been a human, a Klingon—not that I remember that, since that half of me was killed, which is kind of eerie when you think about it which is why I usually try not to—I've been a Borg drone, an Enaran fascist..."

"And a French femme fatale," Tom reminded her. "No wonder you're so confused about your identity. Just be glad you're not a Trill. Hey," he shifted where he knelt by her bed. "Speaking of Klingons, there's one on the Borg sphere who'd love to meet you."

"General Korok," B'Elanna nodded. "Chakotay's told me." She half-whispered, "The last time I saw a Klingon was myself, in that Vidiian camp. I don't even know what I'd say."

Tom shrugged. "Just reminisce about how great it was to kick the Borg's ass."

* * *

A Borg Klingon was a bizarre sight. Fortunately, B'Elanna had long since grown used to bizarre sights during her time on Voyager. Far more awkward was the prospect of speaking to a Klingon, now of all times. B'Elanna still didn't love her Klingon heritage, but she'd made a sort of peace with it at long last. She managed to avoid the targ in the room by keeping the conversation on the engineering tricks the two had pulled off. B'Elanna listened as Korok described how he had managed to take control of a Borg sphere while drinking her favorite childhood blend of hot cocoa. She was taking the call in her quarters. Korok spoke from a room on his commandeered Borg sphere.

"When I find my comrades from Unimatrix Zero, we'll begin working on a way to restore the individuality of every drone on this vessel," the Klingon declared.

B'Elanna thought over Seven of Nine's three-year transformation. "You might have your hands full for a while."

Korok's teeth bared in a silent Klingon laugh. "A task we of Unimatrix Zero have to become accustomed to." His tone changed to indicate that the conversation was wrapping up. "Time grows short. If I'm to rendezvous with my comrades I'll have to go to warp within the hour. This might be the last time I have the honor of speaking with another Klingon in this lifetime. Unless I'm able to reach some of the other warriors from Unimatrix Zero, or the Empire's lost some ships to the Delta Quadrant like your Federation has."

"Doubtful," B'Elanna said.

Korok gave a small nod. "Kahless be with you, B'Elanna daughter of Miral."

Floundering for the proper response, B'Elanna stammered, "And you...General."

And with that, her monitor's screen went black.

B'Elanna stared down at her cocoa. She hadn't thought much of her mother during the mission to the cube. She still didn't know if her mother was truly dead, or if her entire journey to Greth'or had been nothing but a fever dream. In all likelihood, she'd never know. No, that wasn't quite true; B'Elanna would probably still be alive when they made contact with the Alpha Quadrant again, but probably retired. Maybe then she'd get word on what her mother's fate had been, whether she had been dead yet when Voyager was in the sixth year of its journey home.

"That was a little surreal."

B'Elanna jumped. "Tom! I thought you were asleep."

Circumstances had temporarily put Tom and B'Elanna on different sleep schedules. She'd had her boyfriend over for dinner, and he'd fallen asleep on her sofa immediately after. Or so she'd thought.

"That was the first time I've heard you have a full conversation in Klingon." Tom's blue eyes rolled upwards. "I still can't figure out how that damned Universal Translator works."

"Artificial telepathy Tom," B'Elanna said. "Why do you think the ship scan's the crew's brain-waves all the time?"

Tom snorted, hugging a pillow against his chest. "We have computers that can read from our brainwaves whether we want other people to understand what language we're speaking or not, but we still can't create a faster method of travel than Warp 9."

B'Elanna muttered quietly, "I hope we do get home."

Tom seemed a slightly surprised. "Do you?"

It was generally understood between the two of them that neither was in a hurry to get home to their estranged parents, but they each knew the other missed their families all the same.

"I think I've finally started to make peace with my Klingon half. It'd be pretty ironic if I never saw another Klingon again."

"Maybe that's why you were able to settle it," Tom said. "Sorry, that was racist... Specieist?"

B'Elanna finished off her cocoa, lost in thought.

"Hey," Tom rubbed one tired eye, "You've been a Klingon, a human, a Borg and a pregnant pinup girl. But you know what you haven't been yet?"

"Say tribble and I _will_ hurt you."

"Black and white."

B'Elanna stared at him.

Tom shifted on the couch, and held up his hands, as if describing a pitch for a holo-series. "Queen Arachnia has a daughter; the Princess of the Spider People..."

B'Elanna rolled her eyes and headed for her bedroom.

"It's not a damsel in distress role B'Elanna! You'd be firing blasters and insulting Chaotica, you'd have the most memorable hairdo of anyone in the series…"

While Tom rambled on, hopefully half-joking, B'Elanna leaned in on her dresser and closed her eyes.

 _Thank you for this journey, Kahless._


	3. See You Soon, Harry

**A/N: VERY special thanks to AlasterBoneman, who pointed out a crucial character I left out of the first version of this chapter. As soon as I read his review, I rushed back to fix it.**

 **I don't own "Star Trek: Voyager."**

* * *

"…and I go, 'I didn't notice a little box on my chair,' and _not one person_ even acknowledged that I'd even said anything!"

Fittingly, the woman supposedly listening to him gave no hint she'd heard him speak. Then again, conversation had never been her strong point.

Harry sighed. "Well that's not quite true. Ensign Blackhorse looked like she was having a little laugh." He rubbed his temples. "This is so petty. We're about to go to war with the Borg, B'Elanna and Tuvok and the captain are about to get themselves assimilated, and I'm here bellyaching over still being an ensign? …But after losing Lindsay again, and getting near-assimilated by the Borg kids, that was just a slap in the face. I mean I've done a lot for this ship. I've died twice for it, I gave up the chance to stay back on Earth with my family and Libby just to preserve the timeline, I went into that _screwed_ -up program with that... _fucked-_ up clown..."

Harry was not one to curse, but if one thing could bring out the sailor in him, it was that god-fucking-damned clown.

"I brought Naomi—I _literally_ saved a baby from an exploding ship! _Swarming_ with Vidiians! I designed a torpedo that took out a Borg vessel! I changed history to save this crew! …granted, that was a massive violation of the Temporal Prime Directive. You think that's why the captain can't promote me? Because some other version of myself violated the Temporal Prime Directive? Or do you think it's the fact that I caused everyone to die in the first place, in that timeline? Maybe it was that warhead incident, or that illegal date with Derran Tal. God, I've actually been an idiot…" He turned back to his blonde listener. "Am I rambling?"

Her lip quivering, she finally unleashed the long, famous scream she'd seemingly been holding in for the entire conversation.

Over the sound of Constance Goodheart's banshee-like shriek, Harry said, "Well, thanks for listening."

Constance was still screaming when Harry stepped off the holodeck. Realizing he'd forgotten to end the program, Harry was about to utter the command to the computer, when raised voices down the hall caught his attention. Standing in the opened doorway of the holodeck, Harry peered down at the scene: Noah Lessing, former Equinox crewman, had Mortimer Harren—a member of Janeway's original Starfleet crew, whose antisocial personality rivaled Seven and the Doc's—backed against the wall. Sam and Naomi Wildman were standing nearby, along with ex-Maquis Mariah Henley. All of them were talking over each other, angrily. Naomi was the only one who seemed to notice the theatrical scream undercutting the argument. She looked curiously towards the holodeck, and met Harry's eyes.

"Computer end program," Harry ordered.

His eardrums relaxed, but the rest of him certainly didn't. As he jogged toward the group, Mortimer Harren shoved Lessing off him, almost knocking him against the opposite wall.

" _You_ should talk, Lessing!"

"Harry!" Sam cut between the two arguing men to meet him. "I wasn't sure if this warranted a call to Security,"

Lessing snapped, "I'd say desertion warrants—"

Mortimer practically shouted, "You _fucking_ —"

Sam whirled around. " _Not_ in front of my daughter, Mort!"

"Your daughter _and_ you could end up stranded or assimilated—!"

"That's enough!" Harry barked, coming between Lessing and Mortimer.

"Ensign," Lessing panted. "Harren's planning to abandon ship, steal a shuttle."

Harry turned sharply to Mortimer with raised eyebrows, urging the crewman to explain himself.

Heaving, Mortimer said, "I'm just making myself a backup plan, in case our noble Captain gets this ship assimilated or destroyed."

"Mortimer," Harry said, "Stop me if I'm wrong, but you're not a Maquis, Equinox, or someone we picked up along the way. You signed up for this mission—"

"To get into Cosmology school. I signed up to help Starfleet catch a bunch of terrorists, not take orders from them!"

Henley, who'd been silent up until now, lunged at Mortimer, but Harry stopped her with a hand against her shoulder.

"Harren," Harry warned, but was cut off once again.

"She strands us here to save a bunch of flower-picking hippies who'll be dead in a decade anyway, then takes on a bunch of murderers, and now she wants us to risk assimilation for her pet drone's little friends!"

Naomi yelled, " _Don't call Seven_ —!"

Her mother grabbed her arm, and urged her away. As Sam and Naomi vanished down the hall, Lessing retorted to Mortimer calmly, "You're so much better than us 'murders,' why don't you wanna help save countless lives from the Borg now?"

Harry turned to Mortimer with an agreeing expression.

Mortimer ignored Harry and directly addressed Lessing. "What's your stake in this, Equinox? You think you can make up for all the innocents you slaughtered, or are you just trying to score points with Janeway? The woman who if I'm not mistaken once tried to kill you? Not that you didn't deserve it—"

"You want me to call security?" Harry threatened.

Mortimer ignored him, and continued to berate Lessing. "…Or is it just second nature for you to follow any captain you're under blindly no matter how literally insane—"

Harry grabbed Mortimer by the shoulders and practically slammed him against the wall. "That 'insane' captain sacrificed her engagement to her finance, and has been separated from her family like all of us, to save those 'hippies' as you call them. Mariah and the other Maquis lost a lot of friends and family to the Dominion—come to think of it, so have a lot of Starfleets—and I shouldn't have to point out what Seven and the Borg kids have been through. What're you dealing with at the moment, other than missing your cosmology school?"

Mortimer's lip curled, and he knocked Harry's arms away. Hurrying down the hall he snapped, "I didn't sign up for this!"

"I'll be reporting this to the captain," Harry called after him.

Seething, Mariah said in a low voice, "You handled that a lot better than I would've Harry."

"It's my job," Harry said ruefully.

* * *

Just for the moment, Harry wished he'd had his clarinet with him, instead of his shipmates. A relaxing symphony on an empty bridge, like he'd done a few times back when Voyager was passing through "the Void," would be just what he needed right now. But he'd have to settle for Ensign Amelia Jenkins's barely audible, offkey whistling from the helm, and Ensign Kashimuro Nozawa and Crewman Jefferson Biddle's hushed debate behind him.

"...but think of it this way Jefferson; if the Borg do assimilate us, maybe something in Neelix's cooking will poison the whole Collective, so at least we won't have died in vein."

Biddle countered, "If they assimilate us Kash, that'll really screw a lot of people we've helped before, you know, if the Borg learn—"

"Guys!" Harry glanced at the two over his shoulder, "You wanna maybe change the subject?"

Nozawa looked between both Harry and Biddle. "Crimeny, I was just trying to lighten the—"

"What's your favorite animal, Nozawa?" Harry asked.

The other ensign blinked. "Um...Vulcan saber-bears are pretty cool... but why?"

Harry nodded. "Vulcan saber-tooths _are_ pretty cool. And to answer your question ensign, I'm changing the subject." Turning back around in his seat, Harry said, "I could never settle on a favorite animal, but I always liked cats. When I was very little, we had this huge orange tabby named Grendel, purr sounded like a broken boat motor!"

From the helm, Amelia grinned. "Grendel?"

Harry was about to respond, when the lights began to flicker.

" _Janeway to Bridge, report_."

Checking the panel between the command chairs, Harry replied, "Someone's trying to tap into the main computer."

" _Source?_ "

"It's some kind of transwarp signal. It's activating the comm. system."

The Bridge was plunged into green light, and Harry instinctively glanced up, into the black eyes of the Borg Queen.

"Captain," Harry said over the zaps of failing systems, "I think it's for you."

Through the flickering lights, Harry saw Amelia Jenkins backing away from the helm with wide eyes. Harry had never seen the Borg Queen, except in vague illustrations based on Captain Picard and Commander Data's descriptions of her. Her head looked swollen, and he didn't know if her species naturally looked that way before assimilation, or if that skull was just pumped full of implants relaying signals throughout the billions in the Collective.

" _I hope this isn't a bad time_ ," The Queen said quietly.

Amelia was now at the science station, looking like she was unconsciously trying to keep out of the Queen's line of sight. Yet it was Amelia who asked, in a quiet shaking voice, "Is this a joke?"

" _I've the diplomatic experience of over four-hundred billion individuals from around the galaxy,"_ the Queen stated. " _Your primitive methods for maintaining order in the chaos of individuality_."

Harry felt himself rise to a stance, without being entirely sure why. Pride, perhaps; if he was going to be assimilated or blown away right now, he wouldn't do it cowering in his chair like the dweeb so many people thought he was. The Queen's expression didn't change, except the corner of her putrid green mouth, which Harry swore twitched as if about to turn up into a smile.

His heart froze when a whooshing sound hissed behind him, and for a nanosecond he was positive the Borg had just blasted a hole in the Bridge's hull and they'd all be sucked into space. But it was just the captain and Chakotay stepping off the turbolift.

The Queen's eyes turned to Janeway. " _Captain_."

Harry was frozen where he stood, but he heard the captain reply quietly from behind him, "It's been a long time. How are things in the Collective?"

" _Perfect, for the most part. Voyager_?"

A brief image of Janeway and the Queen chit-chatting over coffee flew through Harry's mind, and for a second he was optimistic he was about to wake up in his quarters.

"… _I understand you've established contact with Starfleet_."

How the hell could she possibly have known that?

" _Perhaps you'll be getting home sooner than you expected_."

"Perhaps," Janeway said evenly.

" _We could help you_."

"How so?" Chakotay asked.

" _Transwarp technology. You'd find that we can be quite accommodating_ …."

 _No_ , Harry thought, as Janeway and the Queen talked on. _God hell no, don't make a deal with the Borg again Captain, not this time_ … The thought of bringing a Borg armada home to Mom, Dad and Libby turned Harry's stomach.

Janeway was still playing along. "…I'm not sure I know what you mean."

" _You know exactly what I mean. Tend to your own crew. Stay away from things that don't concern you_."

"I'm afraid I can't do that, but thanks for the offer."

Harry felt like a starship had just been lifted off his chest, hearing those words.

" _I won't be as accommodating next time_ ," the Queen said. " _Reconsider_."

"I'm sorry."

Harry waited for Janeway to finish with some line like, "I don't make deals with drones" or something like that; but then the Queen turned to Harry, her eyes fixed on his. " _We'll see you soon, Harry_."

The screen went black.

"What'd she mean by that?" Harry asked anyone who was listening.

"Why the stab at diplomacy?" Chakotay asked the captain, as if Harry hadn't spoken.

"She's trying to find out what we're up to," Janeway replied. "She's worried. Have B'Elanna and Tuvok meet me in Sickbay."

Harry wanted to scream at both of them, but fortunately for his career, his voice was now failing him.

As soon as the doors hissed shut behind the captain and Chakotay, Amelia said, "You know she was just trying to rattle your cage Harry."

Harry shot the blonde pilot a blank look.

She added, "Or Janeway's more likely."

For some reason, Harry had mistakenly thought she'd been suggesting _Janeway_ was "rattling his cage" by not answering him. Relieved, and disappointed in himself, Harry nodded.

* * *

"With that new transmission from the Borg, we'll be doubling our precautions."

Harry stood in the shuttle bay, addressing Ensign Samantha Wildman, Crewman Marla Gilmore, and Icheb. Years ago, the Captain had decided on a specific precaution for Voyager's most precious cargo any time the adults of the ship elected to undergo a particularly risky mission for the greater good. Sam and Naomi had always been sent away in a shuttle, occasionally with extra help or protection, during such missions. This time they'd be joined by the Borg children, and former Equinox engineer Marla Gilmore, who'd adopted the Borg baby. Amanda Gilmore was currently asleep inside the shuttle, where Naomi, Mezoti and the twins waited, listening to Harry through the opened door.

"Here are your new coordinates," Harry handed Sam a PADD. "The nebula should mask your signature from the Borg. No one's looked at them except the Doctor, so if Voyager—" remembering the kids, Harry caught himself.

Sam and Marla seemed to understand the subtext. Should Voyager be assimilated, the Doctor would delete himself, and the Borg would have no way of knowing where the "lifeboat" had hidden.

"I would like to assist here, on Voyager," Icheb argued. "The gesture would be barely sufficient, given my past actions."

"We've all done things we weren't proud of Icheb," Marla reminded the boy. "And some of us were actually in control of our actions when we did them."

"Take care of the kids Icheb, that'll be more than enough," Harry assured the Brunali teen.

Mezoti pipped up from the shuttle, "Is it true that the Borg Queen threatened to assimilate you Harry?"

Next to her, Naomi perked with a combination of worry and curiosity.

Harry laughed, "She was just trying to rattle my cage."

Mezoti replied without missing a beat, "I'm remorseful for my past attempt to assimilate you on the cube, Harry. If you were to be assimilated in full by the Queen, my guilt would increase significantly."

"We'd find a way to save him," Naomi assured her friend. "Maybe he'd end up in Unimatrix Zero and lead an incursion."

Sam, who'd been staring at her daughter, turned back to Harry with a wry smile.

"Or something like that," Harry agreed. "Something else Sam," Harry handed the xenobiologist a small chip. "A present from Tom. Some antique cartoons from the ship's database for the kids to pass the time. It's got 'Looney Tunes,' 'Hanna Barbara,' and… some show about a park. I'd offer you something from this century, but the only kids' shows in the ship's database come from its historical files."

"Tell Tom thanks," Sam said. "See you soon Harry." Boarding the shuttle, she caught herself. "Oh god, bad choice of words."

"Hey, I'd rather hear it from you all than the Queen." Harry pointed to the kids. "You get back, I wanna know who's team Bugs and who's team Daffy. Tom and I have a bet." After seeing the "lifeboat" off, Harry's feigned optimism vanished, and he finished to himself, "A bet who can get drunk faster."

* * *

"It was a threat against Captain Janeway," B'Elanna said with conviction as she lined up her pool shot.

Tom had talked Harry into joining him and B'Elanna at Sandrine's, to relieve some stress before the big mission. Opposite B'Elanna at the pool table was Ensign Renlay Sharr, a deceivingly plain, young, and Human looking young woman; in fact, Sharr was close to fifty, and could boast Human, Deltan, Betazoid, and El Aurian heritage. Despite the age difference, Harry was 98% certain Tom was covertly trying to set Sharr and Harry up. And while Harry normally wouldn't be opposed to the idea, he was in no mood for romance just now.

"Come on Harry," Tom pushed a margarita towards Harry. "My treat."

The holodeck could be routed to the replicator system, any time someone wanted to consume real food or beverages. It took these from one's replicator rations, of course. Tom had insisted on treating Harry.

"Why not 'we'll see your crew soon?'" Harry wondered aloud as he took his drink. "Why 'Harry?'"

Sharr pursed her lips. "She knows the captain's protective of her crew, and she's probably hacked our crew manifest. It wouldn't take a lot to put together that—"

"I'm the baby of the ship," Harry said ruefully. "Little Ensign Kim, only twenty-goddamn-six years old…"

Tom rubbed his temple.

"Maybe she's planning to make an example out of me," Harry mused darkly.

"Why would the Borg care about making any kind of 'example?'" Tom asked almost wearily. "That'd be an inefficient waste of resources and time."

"I think of you as the diplomat," Sharr said. "I hear you broke up a fight earlier today, with that schmuck Harren."

It took Harry a moment to realize that she was referring to the "baby of the ship" comment he'd made.

"He's not a schmuck," Harry sighed over his drink. "We all have a breaking point."

"See?" Sharr lifted a hand, as if Harry had just proved her point.

Harry gave a forced chuckle, and took a sip.

"She's got a point Harry," Tom said. "You break up fights as much as Neelix. And you're always the first one to notice if something might be controversial."

Harry recalled (for some reason) the time the Doctor had programed a Cardassian hologram to help save B'Elanna's life, and how oblivious the Doctor had been to what an insane idea that would be on this of all ships.

"Diplomacy's pretty crucial for a command position," B'Elanna noted. "I'd say you're halfway there Harry."

Tom added ruefully, "You _wanna_ be the one leading an away team into a Borg cube to get assimilated?"

"Hey," B'Elanna snapped at her boyfriend, "Harry's kicked some Borg ass already." She stopped in the middle of her next pool shot. "You think the Borg Queen knows Harry was behind that torpedo, last year?"

"Why would she care?" Tom countered.

And why hadn't Captain Janeway cared enough to promote him that day? Harry wondered. Granted, his torpedo was only supposed to disable the ship, not destroy it. Was that why the captain wasn't promoting him?

Maybe it was the actions of his future-self, that same year, violating the Temporal Prime Directive. Or just the revelation that he himself had made a blunder that woul've killed almost the entire crew, had not his future-self intervened.

Thinking out loud, Harry muttered, "Maybe my future-self did something to piss off the Bor—" before stopping himself.

Tom, B'Elanna and Sharr all stopped and looked at him.

Tom squinted at him. "What?"

"Nothing," Harry turned his attention back to his drink.

After a moment, Sharr sighed, "Temporal Prime Directive." She almost returned to her game before something apparently struck her. "Maybe… years from now, when Harry's captain of some ship, he'll fight the Borg in some temporal anomaly, make personal enemies with the Queen in the distant past."

Tom blinked through fatigue. "Someone maybe wanna rephrase that for those of us who are tired, and maybe a little drunk?"

"Sharr thinks Harry's gonna become a time-traveling captain who'll be a bigger thorn in the Borg's side than Picard and Janeway combined." B'Elanna translated. "Far-fetched, but I kind of like it."

Harry wasn't sure he did. Changing the subject, he snorted into his margarita, "I've been getting used to the idea that I'll still be an ensign when I'm 85."

B'Elanna drummed her fingers on her pool stick. "You don't have to do everything important in your life before you turn twenty-seven Harry."

Harry glanced at her, torn between _Tell that to my parents_ and _Easy for you to say, Lieutenant!_

"I'm just… not used to being this far behind." Harry confessed. "On anything."

Still fiddling with her pool stick, B'Elanna glanced away in thought. Finally, she replied, "When I joined the Maquis, I thought that was going to be the biggest thing that ever happened to me. But…"

Tom finished for her, "That was just the opening crawl prologue to the epic adventure of B'Elanna Torres' life."

B'Elanna shrugged. "Whatever that means."

Harry shook his head. "What?"

Sharr translated, "Maybe the biggest thing in your life will happen later, and Fate's just dropped you on Voyager as a warm-up."

Given what Voyager had been like so far, Harry wasn't sure if that idea excited or terrified him.

* * *

The Borg Queen's cold metallic hand traced Harry's cheek. "I told you we'd be seeing you soon. Welcome to the Collective Harry."

 _No…_

Harry tried to protest as the Queen extended her assimilation tubules, but no sound came out of his mouth. He screamed silently as the nanoprobes flooded his body, the sensation just as it had been on the cube when the Borg children had attempted to "assimilate" him. Harry felt a wheel erupt on his cheek, and a web of cold silver running down one inner forearm to form a cage over his hand.

Then a bunch of drones were pushing him down onto a white hospital gurney, and a sickeningly familiar, cheerful voice sang, " _Assimilation's a long and messy process Harry!_ " A drone was hovering over him, wearing a metal mask covered in blinking, Borg components. Now in a low, echoing, mechanical voice, the drone breathed, "Hope you don't mind if we don't use anesthesia, it impedes efficiency."

"No!" Harry yelled, as if that would somehow stop the drone from taking off the mask to reveal the grinning, gray-painted clown beneath.

Circus music echoed throughout the cube with a mechanical hum, as the lights in the assimilation chamber blinked red and green. A Borg claw painted in bright circus colors hovered over Harry, clutching a sharp instrument. Harry called frantically for Tom, B'Elanna, Libby, Lindsay, Seven, anyone.

"They're already here!" the Borg clown assured him. "We're all friends in the Collective."

The instrument pierced Harry right under his ribcage, exactly like that needle aboard the Caretaker's Array. As he screamed, two more drones drilled something into his neck; that too was a sensation he'd felt before, once, right before dying.

Over Harry's screams the Clown asked, "Why all the fuss? You're invincible now! No more getting killed by primitive aliens or knocked out by Hirogen. You're the greatest threat to the galaxy! Of course, Species 8472 might want to pay you another visit now..."

And then Harry was marching down Voyager's corridor, as his friends fired phaser blasts that had no effect on him, everything tinted green.

"Ensign Kim!" bellowed Captain Janeway, whose hair was done up in the bun of her early years. "I'm giving you a direct order!"

"Irrelevant." Harry heard himself say, as his assimilation tubules struck the captain in the left eye of all places.

While Janeway stumbled back holding her face, Harry turned to Tuvok, who stared at him with impassive disappointment as Harry stuck his tubules into the Vulcan's neck.

"Ensign, you are demonstrating rank insubordination." Tuvok reported, as a Borg tube grew out of one ear and curved around the back of his head.

 _I'm sorry Commander!_

Familiar laughter echoed through Voyager's twisted corridors.

 _I'm sorry_ were the only words Harry could say, even in his head, over and over. _I'm so, so sorry…_

"Is that supposed to make us feel better?" snapped B'Elanna, who now wore a red eyepiece with a tube that ended between two forehead ridges.

"I'm very disappointed in you Harry!" his mother scolded, from where she stood down the hall in a red command uniform. "You're demoted to the rank of kitchen rodent!"

Tom was crouched over, seemingly in pain, as some strange pile of Borg implants erupted and formed a shape on his back. It wound up being a Borg-styled version of Captain Proton's jet pack. Returning to a stance, Tom—now wearing green-tinted Borg goggles—cheerfully declared, "B'Elanna look! Defending Earth is futile!"

"Look what you did, Starfleet!" B'Elanna exclaimed with a mechanical echo. "I have to spend the rest of my life in the same unimatrix with this idiot!"

Harry tried to apologize again, but when he opened his mouth he only heard himself announce, "Resistance is futile."

Harry strode down the hall, past assimilated comrades. The Delaney sisters were arguing over who was wearing their identical blue eyepieces and arm-claws better, while Captain Janeway impassively assimilated a coffeepot. A fully assimilated Seven of Nine played Kadis-kot on a glowing green Borg Kadis-kot board; her opponent, Naomi Wildman, who resembled a fully assimilated drone in miniature, her Ktarian horns all glowing Borg green. Behind his assimilated friends, Harry saw the Clown twirling his clarinet like a baton, and playfully bop an unmoved Icheb on the back of the head with it, then played a tune that blew blue flames out the instrument's end.

Harry stepped into the turbo lift, where Grendel, the orange tabby cat he'd grown up with, was also partially assimilated. The cat was licking a tiny Borg claw where one front paw had once been. The feline's loud purring was enhanced by a Borg vocal processor.

The turbo-lift doors opened to reveal a massive chamber inside a Borg cube, where the Borg Queen herself stood high above her working drones, on an elevated platform several stories up. Someone whistled, and Harry turned to see the Clown waving a handkerchief from a walkway high above and blowing him a kiss. The Queen's platform began to lower, and Harry was frozen as she descended down to him, her black eyes coldly fixed on his. When she spoke, he could feel her voice in his head, vibrating through his ears.

" _Drone Twenty-One of Twenty, Duodenary Adjunct of Unimatrix 9,999. Report_."

"My Queen," he began timidly, his mechanical voice quivering. "I have assimilated all personnel of the U.S.S. Voyager, the U.S.S. Enterprise, Deep Space Nine, Starfleet Academy, the Klingon Empire and the planet Earth. May I...that is...have I proven myself worthy of a more significant designation?"

The Queen stared at Twenty-One of Twenty coldly. " _No room for promotions in the Collective._ " She turned, hawk-like, to another drone in the room. " _Five of Ten, report_."

A drone with a Borg jetpack and a complex double eyepiece that resembled Captain Proton's goggles reported, "I've made love to a sexy Klingon and consumed an entire pepperoni pizza."

" _Excellent work. You are now First of Ten. Dismissed_."

First of Ten walked by, dancing robotically in smug triumph, while the Clown's cackles echoed mechanically through the cube. Twenty-One of Twenty remained where he stood, the reality of his eternal fate sinking in.

" _Warning: two alarms missed._ "

Harry burst awake to the sound of his "snooze alarm." He had the computer set to wake him at the same time every day, increasing in volume every time it had to repeat itself. He rarely overslept, but obviously he'd been under some extra stress these past few days.

"Just a dream," Harry told himself, breathing heavily. "Just a dream…I'll get a promotion someday."

* * *

Voyager rendezvoused with the "lifeboat" shuttle two nights after B'Elanna and Captain Janeway were released from Sickbay (Tuvok would need a bit more time). Harry and Seven went to the shuttle bay to greet the group. On the way there, Harry couldn't help but notice that Seven was walking more slowly than usual, her stride lacking its usual proud air, and not once did she express disdain or annoyance with him.

"You seem a little under the weather Seven."

"Clarify," she said in a distant voice, her blue eyes staring ahead blankly.

"There was a time when I'd have loved to have a full ten minutes with you without hearing some Borg snark, but now I miss the old Seven. What's eating you?"

She glanced at him, and then confessed, "The last few days have hardly been relaxing."

Harry was confused. "But you got to reunite with all your old friends—oh, yeah." He remembered that Unimatrix Zero had been destroyed. "But you helped liberate thousands of people! Millions, probably."

"True, but now their fate is uncertain."

"They've already kicked the Borg Queen's ass of all things. I'm sure they're up for whatever else the universe can try throwing at them."

Seven didn't reply. Harry now figured he recognized her exact mood. He knew, because he himself had been there, just a few months ago.

"When I reunited with Lindsay a few months ago, that was painful. And just to lose her all over again." He glanced at Seven and saw her swallow, confirming his theory that something similar had happened to her in Unimatrix Zero. "But before she left, she told me to enjoy life, for myself and Lindsay. I'm sure… your friends in Unimatrix Zero would say something similar."

Seven looked at him, and her lips parted, as if unsure how to respond. She didn't get a chance. Marla Gilmore came around the corner hushing her crying baby, bidding Seven and Harry a quick hello as she passed. Next came the raised voice of Samantha Wildman.

"…and I'll personally see that your holodeck privileges are confiscated for from now until Voyager gets back to Earth, if any of you utter any of those words or phrases again!"

"Yes Mom," Naomi said quietly.

Mezoti asked, "May we sing them instead?"

"No!"

"Sam!" Harry greeted the ensign. "Uh, how was the trip?"

Sam glanced at her daughter over folded arms and gave a heavy sigh.

"Sam?"

Turning back to him, Sam said simply, "Tell Tom 'South Park' was probably _not_ a cartoon for children."

Harry wasn't too familiar with that title. But now that he thought of it, he did recall one drunken night a while back when he and Tom had discovered some hysterically inappropriate cartoons from the late 20th and early 21st centuries, in the ship's database. All he could remember visually though was an animated milkshake and an order of French fries, with a face resembling Dr. Chaotica, exchanging profanities with what seemed to be a red tribble.

"Well I don't know about you," Harry said quickly, "But I could go for some fries, or maybe a shake. I'm famished. I'll be in the mess hall if you need anything." He hurried away before either Sam or himself could question what he'd just said.

When Harry reached the dimly lit mess hall, he found one other occupant. The captain invited Harry to join her in her midnight coffee, and he gladly obliged. After a lengthy discussion about their experiences with the Borg, the captain slowly lowered her mug.

"Harry, there's something I've been meaning to talk to you about. I feel I owe you an explanation."

Harry stared at her. "For…?"

"The lack of a little box on your chair."

"Oh!" Harry shifted uncomfortably. "I, I didn't—it was just a joke,"

"No, Harry. You still holding the rank of ensign, after everything you've done for this crew, after everything you've been through over the last six years, _that'_ s a joke." She weaved her fingers under her chin. "When Tuvok received his promotion, I distinctly remember thinking, I was pretty sure I knew who was next." She was silent for a beat. "And then our letters from home came in."

Harry froze inwardly. What on Earth—literally, what had he done back on Earth—that could have affected his career out here?

"I was informed—politely of course—that Starfleet wasn't too keen on my decision to assign provisional ranks to Chakotay and his crew, nor the responsibilities I gave to Neelix, Kes and Seven. And I technically didn't have the authority to grant Tuvok a real promotion either, but I talked Starfleet into letting it stick."

"But no more promotions after that," Harry said, relaxing inwardly.

"For now." She unfolded her hands. "I'm optimistic that if Voyager isn't home within the next year or two, I'll find a way to pull some strings. Because frankly I think you should be a lieutenant by now. Maybe even a lieutenant commander."

Those words, casually as she'd said them, stuck in Harry's mind. He'd remember that for a long time.

"After you went through history to save this crew from destruction,"

"Violating the Temporal Prime Directive," Harry pointed out.

"Well," Janeway smiled, "That wasn't really you. You can't be held responsible for your temporal clones' actions. But you should be rewarded for the exemplary performance you've demonstrated over the last six years. You talked a hostile alien warhead out of its mission; you defeated a Borg vessel with a single torpedo; you gave Naomi another chance at life, and you sacrificed the chance to return to Earth to preserve the timeline."

Harry thought of Libby, the girlfriend with whom his reunion and secondary departure from five years prior had been so painful; he realized he'd barely thought of Libby in the last year. The last few months, it had been Lindsay taking up most of that part of his mind. _Twice,_ Harry realized, he'd come close to reuniting with a lost love, only to be separated again. The first time, he'd chosen to make the sacrifice; with Lindsay, he'd thought there was no way he could possibly do it again. It was largely due to his experience having to let Libby go a second time that he'd fought so hard not to have to do it all again with Lindsay. And poor Seven was apparently going through something similar, with someone in Unimatrix Zero. Once up a time, Harry thought dryly, those parallel experiences would have filled him with hope that maybe Seven was a possibility for him; but that ship had sailed as well. Would anything ever change for him?

 _You don't have to do everything before you're twenty-seven Harry._

"I want you to know," Janeway said, breaking him out of his thoughts, "that in the case that Voyager does find a way home in the next year, I've prepared a letter of recommendation to Starfleet for your promotion."

Lieutenant Kim, Harry thought. Maybe someday, Captain Kim, kicking the Borg's ass in some time-traveling adventure, with the help of his real soul mate whom he'd met on some escapade even greater than Voyager. Far-fetched, he reminded himself, but it was still a pleasing thought.

"Thank you, Captain." Harry stammered. "That… this conversation…. it means a lot."

Janeway smiled. "It's the least I could do."

* * *

 **A/N: Making Harry Kim interesting was a lot more of a challenge than I'd imagined. But in the end, I had a LOT of fun tormenting the dweeb. I can understand where the show's writers were coming from, now.**

 **On the "lower decks" cameos in this chapter: Ensign Kashimuro Nozawa is a canon background character according to Memory Alpha. He looks enough like one of the men behind Harry Kim in the "See you soon Harry" scene IMO. (And I am not saying all Asians in gold uniforms look the same; but recurring characters on "Star Trek" change actors often enough, that a general age rage, uniform, hair color and ethnicity are all I need to say "that's Sam Wildman," "That's Lt. Andrews," or "That's Ensign Nozawa.") Biddle is mentioned in "Q2" but never shown. Renlay Sharr is a crewmember according to Memory Alpha, and while Sharr is a German surname, I have a harder time finding anything for "Renlay." I decided to use her mostly because her name stands out to me.**

 **The theories about "We'll see you soon Harry" come from forum threads on TrekBBs and Scifistackexchange. And specifically, the line about an assimilated Harry asking if he is worthy of "a more significant designation?" came from a person's post on one of those sites.**


End file.
